


City of Gods and Angels

by krazybaby21



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Clary doesn't exist, Demigods meet Shadowhunters, M/M, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krazybaby21/pseuds/krazybaby21
Summary: Kal Heiler thought that his life was weird enough upon discovering that the Greek gods were real and that one of them was his father. But that was before he ran into a trio of monster hunters in one of the most famous all-ages clubs in New York with tattoos and strange weapons unlike anything he's ever seen before. Things in his life are about to get more complicated than ever when Kal finds himself once again realizing that his view of the world is incredibly incomplete.Conspiracy, mystery, gods, angels...one can find it all, and more, in New York City. What secrets does this city hold, and just what is in store for Kal?Mortal Instruments rewrite.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [City of Shadows](https://archiveofourown.org/works/585318) by [Siavahda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda). 



> The story takes place after the events of the Heroes of Olympus series. The events of Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard have not happened, nor have those of the Trials of Apollo. I screwed around with the timeline, as otherwise the Mortal Instruments would be taking place in roughly the same time as the Titan's Curse.)

#  **CHAPTER ONE**

 

 _“Are you ready to rock?”_ the singer yelled into the microphone, her wild, cotton candy pink afro bouncing as she moved.

A good portion of the audience let out a cheer—friends, classmates, relatives. Most of them looked very out of place in the gothic wonderland that was the Pandemonium club, dressed far too casually amongst the leather- and metal-clad regulars who were just there to have a good time. Many of them, oddly enough, sported orange shirts that glowed under the flashing neon lights on the dance floor.

Amongst these unusual patrons was sixteen-year-old Kal Heiler, who definitely cheered the loudest upon seeing her walk on stage. After all, Ren Quinn was his best friend, and had been for nearly five years. Of course he would be there to support her and her band at their first big gig.

The Pandemonium Club was one of the most famous all-ages clubs in Greater New York, known best for its surreal atmosphere and fashionably hardcore regulars. It certainly lived up to the hype; haunting fog, courtesy of strategically placed fog machines, coated the dance floor and floated around the members of the crowd, giving them all an ethereal look; the multicoloured lights cast the room in brilliant golds and acid greens and arctic blues and bubblegum pinks at random intervals. There was a group of teenage boys nearby dancing shamelessly in metal corsets, and a boy that kind of looked like Michael Clifford giving away tablets of herbal ecstasy out of his teddy bear backpack.

Kal looked fairly out of place in his camp shirt and ripped up blue jeans, but then again, he was used to being out of place. Ren, on the other hand, looked like a punk fairy princess in her crop top and pink chucks, her cotton-candy hair flying around her face.

“Hey, everybody!” she said into the microphone, the lights sparking off her nose ring when she grinned. “We’re SWACOR, and this is Paralyzer!”

 _“GO REN!”_ Kal yelled as James on the guitar kicked into the intro of the song. Kal saw Ren laugh and wink at him before the first verse began, her rough voice echoing throughout the cavernous room.

 

_I hold on so nervously_   
_To me and my drink  
I wish it was cooling me_

_But so far has not been good_   
_It’s been shitty  
And I feel awkward as I should_

 

Sunny With A Chance Of Rock—or SWACOR, as Ren had so eloquently decided to shorten it to—consisted of four members; Ren Quinn, lead singer; James King, lead guitar; Montel Dubeaux, bass guitar; and Miranda Hale, drums. They were a motley crew; small Ren with her cotton candy-pink hair, ripped jeans, and scuffed Chucks; tall, pale James with his windswept dark hair and leather vest; broad-shouldered Montel with his mahogany-coloured skin and startling blue eyes; wild Miranda with her feathery turquoise hair and her numerous plastic bracelets that clunked together when she banged on the drums. On first glance, no one would likely suspect that they were all siblings.

No one would guess that they were all demigods, either.

A year previously, after the defeat of Gaea at Camp Half-Blood and the truce between the Greeks and the Romans (a long, long story—like, two five-book series long), Ren and a few of her cabin mates got bored and decided to form a band. The first few months had been spent debating over band themes and names; Montel had suggested “Gaea Destroyers”, which was vetoed on the grounds that a.) they weren’t really that big of a part in defeating Gaea, and b.) it kind of sounded like they hated nature or something and Miranda was a huge activist; Miranda had suggested “Die, Romans, Die!” which was vetoed on grounds that _we’re on good terms with the Romans, now, Miranda, calm down;_ and James had suggested the “Apollonettes,” which was immediately vetoed on the grounds that it was really stupid. Eventually, they decided on SWACOR, what it was now, as a sort of inside joke—they were all Cabin Seven, children of Apollo, the god of the sun and of music. It seemed fitting.

After posting a Youtube video of them performing a cover of a Green Day song, the Pandemonium Club had apparently gotten wind of them, and well, here they were. SWACOR was the whole reason that about a fourth of the Camp was in the audience—a dangerous amount. Kal really wanted to focus on the music, on being supportive, but he was on edge. This many demigods in one place was bound to draw attention from some unsavory types, and though he really didn’t feel like fighting a monster any time that night, it was all he could think about. He wasn’t the only one, either; a shared glance with a couple other demigods in attendance, like the famous Percy Jackson (maybe you’ve heard of him?), proved that they, too, were preparing for things to go wrong.

 

 _This club has got to be_  
 _The most pretentious thing_  
 _Since I thought you and me_  


_Well, I am imagining_   
_A dark lit place  
Or your place or my place_

 

Suddenly, someone bumped hard into Kal’s shoulder. He swivelled around, prepared to tell them off, but the remark died on his tongue when he saw them.

The boy blinked, looking startled. He had dark skin and electric blue hair that stuck up around his face like the flames of a dying star. The blue clashed horribly with the fire engine red of his leather jacket, though he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. It was like someone had turned up the saturation on all of his colours—even the green of his eyes was far too light, like spring grass. Just looking at him made Kal’s vision swim with the colour wheel.

“Sorry,” said the boy quickly, before moving on.

But even as he moved through the crowd, Kal’s gaze didn’t leave him. He watched silently, carefully keeping him in view—which, thanks to the boy’s very colourful appearance, wasn’t very hard at all. Nobody else seemed to notice anything wrong, but that moment of contact had sent a horrible chill down Kal’s spine. He knew what that feeling meant.

_Monster._

Kal’s hand immediately went to his side, where the sheath holding his knife was hidden under his shirt. He didn’t dare draw it, not yet, not here with so many mortals nearby.

But something wasn’t right. The monster seemed a bit confused, or lost, his unsettling eyes scanning the crowd. It didn’t seem to notice any of the demigods at all—or if it did, it paid them no mind.

How unusual...

Without warning, the monster snapped to attention like a hunting dog that caught a scent. His gaze was locked on something—or rather, someone. When Kal followed its eyes, he saw _her._

 

_Well, I'm not paralyzed_   
_But, I seem to be struck by you_   
_I wanna make you move_   
_Because you're standing still_

 

A girl who looked like she’d just stepped out of the Aphrodite cabin had broken away from the others. As far as Kal knew, she wasn’t a demigod; he was certain that he would have remembered her face had he seen her at camp, and yet she was unfamiliar. She wore a floor-length white dress with sleeves that belled out around her arms and lace at the collar—an odd choice for a nightclub, but it certainly was attention-grabbing. Her hair was dark, spilling down around her shoulders in elegant waves of inky darkness, her eyes like two coals embedded in her flesh. Under the strobing lights, the large, red crystal that hung around her neck seemed to have a heartbeat of its own, and perhaps it did; it very well could have been enchanted.

The girl smiled at the monster boy as she passed, her dark gaze something imperious that he was unable to disobey. Kal watched them weave through the crowd, only managing to keep track of them by following the snowy white of the girl’s dress and the vibrant red of the monster’s hideous jacket, neon signs in the gloom of the club. They disappeared into a door marked as a storage room, looking for all the world like any other couple looking for a little bit of privacy.

 _Strange,_ Kal thought, his hand still at his hip. He didn’t know what kind of monster this boy could be, but from his experience, he couldn’t think of one that had any particular fancy with making out with hot mortal girls in the grimy storage room of a goth club. He couldn’t think of any that had any sort of fancy with mortals at all, save for maybe eating children or young maidens.

He was so lost in thought that he almost didn’t notice the two slinking figures until they vanished.

They were both dressed in black, hoods pulled up to conceal their features. Kal only noticed them when they paused at the door where the girl and the monster had disappeared, heads tipped toward one another as though they were conferring. Then they both pulled something from inside their jackets, identical somethings that were long and sharp and glinted harshly under the lights of the club.

Daggers.

 

_If your body matches_   
_What your eyes can do_   
_You'll probably move right through_   
_Me on my way to you_

 

Kal tensed, panic flooding through him. Something was going down, and if that boy was what he thought it was, these idiots were in way over their head. Unless their weapons were made of celestial bronze or imperial gold―and given that they definitely weren’t demigods, he figured that they probably weren’t―then somebody was going to get seriously hurt, and it wouldn’t be the monster.

Unless he intervened…

It was insanely stupid, and reckless, and―frankly, something that Percy Jackson would do. But Kal wasn’t Percy Jackson. He was just an Apollo kid who was semi-okay at archery and could throw a knife or two, but whose real expertise was in the healing area. He wasn’t a fighter―he was the one who _fixed up_ the fighters when they got hurt.

In that moment, Kal must have forgotten all of that. His only excuse was that he must have been suffering from temporary insanity and momentarily thought that he was Beowulf or some shit, off to go slay Grendel with his two bare hands.

So, without backup from any of the literal _dozens_ of demigods in the vicinity—most of whom were much, much better fighters than he was—and armed with only one measly little dagger, Kal forged his way through the crowd, intending to be some sort of hero from a really long-winded, ancient English poem that hardly anyone cared about anymore.

 

~

 

The storage room was just as Kal expected a storage room to look like—high, barred windows, dusty floor snaked through with electrical wires. The smell of old paint lingered in the air. When the door shut, the music from the dance floor became oddly muted, mingling with the faint sound of New York traffic from outside. He could only barely make out Ren’s words anymore: _“I hold out for one more drink, before I think, I’m looking too desperately…”_

The two boys had disappeared, but there was the girl and the monster standing in the center of the room, facing each other. Kal ducked behind the nearest concrete pillar, drawing his dagger from its sheath. _Solas_ ―named for an angel and not, despite popular misconception, after Kal’s half brother, Will Solace, who hadn’t even been born when the blade was named―gleamed dully in the dim lighting, the named carved in Greek along the blade. It’s lack of a guard made it more aerodynamic, though it wasn’t really made to be thrown. In a pinch, it would have to do; Kal could be a very good shot, but he was terrible at close combat. If it came down to it, he’d have to resort to remembering his lessons on throwing and pray to the gods that he hit the mark.

“What’s your name?” asked a male voice―the blue-haired boy. Monster. Whatever. Kal straightened, turning so that he could peer easily around the pillar without being seen.

The girl in the white dress smiled, malice glittering in her eyes. “Isabelle,” she replied, and there was no missing the flirtatious undertone to her words. Kal squirmed, feeling uncomfortable. Could they cut the foreplay and just get to the goddamn fighting already? He didn’t want to kill this thing until he was certain that it was a monster.

“That’s a nice name.” Red-leather walked toward the girl, stepping very carefully amongst the tangle of wires along the floor. It was such a human action that Kal was almost startled; was it actually afraid of electricity, or was it just playing the part? “I haven’t seen you here before.”

Isabelle batted her eyelashes, a smirk playing on her lips. She seemed almost translucent the frail lighting, as if Kal could walk right through her and not feel a thing. Had he believed in angels, he thought that Isabelle would have looked like one then―beautiful, ethereal, and unmistakably plotting a delicious death in her head.

“Are you asking me if I come here often?” she asked, chuckling softly. She raised her hand to cover her mouth in that delicate way girls sometimes did. As she did so, the cuff of her sleeve slipped down, revealing that despite her traditional girliness, the girl could rock her ink. A swirling bracelet of tattoos stood out stark against the pallor of her skin, a senseless, almost celtic knot-looking design that was actually really awesome.

Red-Leather seemed to notice it too, because he froze, eyes going wide. Apparently, it had some sort of meaning that Kal wasn’t aware of, because the boy looked at Isabelle with a sense of fury that hadn’t been there a moment before. “You―”

But Kal never got to know what Red-Leather was going to say, because Isabelle cut him off by spinning around and kicking him square in the chest with her thigh-high, high-heeled black boots. He flew backwards and slammed into a concrete pillar (thankfully _not_ the one that Kal was hiding behind). Before Red-Leather had a chance to recover,  something appeared in Isabelle’s hand―a golden whip that glowed like Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth when she brought it down. It flew out and curled around the pillar, snapping tight and tying the monster there when she yanked on it. Red-Leather glared at her and writhed in his bonds as though the whip burned him.

Imperial gold?

Maybe these people were smarter than Kal had originally thought.

Isabelle turned from the monster, looking off into the shadows opposite of where Kal was hiding. “He’s all yours, boys!” she called.

The two boys from earlier materialized from the darkness. Their hoods had been pulled down, revealing that one was blond and the other dark-haired like the girl. The dark-haired one was a couple inches taller, and lean, with milky pale skin and eyes the colour of the blue in the sky just before dawn. The blond was broader at the shoulders, with a golden tint to the tan of his face and hands and shaggy hair like that of a lion’s mane.

The blond held a funny sort of dagger in his hands, toying with it as he fixed the monster with his intense gaze. “So, are there any more with you?”

“Any more _what_?” Red-Leather spat, features twisted in pain.

“Come on, now.” The boy tugged back the collar of his shirt, revealing a funny tattoo over his heart. It looked sort of like a diamond with wings sticking out of the top―that was the best way that Kal could think to describe it, anyway. The symbol meant nothing to him, but he had a niggling feeling in the back of his brain that he’d seen it somewhere before.

The blond let his shirt fall back into place. “You know what we are,” he said.

Though the symbol meant nothing to Kal, Red-Leather sure seemed to recognize it. He let out an inhuman hiss, his eyes going entirely black―like something from _Supernatural_. The comparison was disturbing.

 _“Shadowhunter,”_ the thing growled, and it no longer even _sounded_ human.

A smirk played across the blond’s lips. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He took a step forward then, angling the blade in his hand dangerously close to the monster’s throat. “Now, how about you answer my question, hm?”

A shudder went down Kal’s spine, his hand tightening on _Solas_ ’s grip. This was some sort of gang shit that he most certainly did not want to get involved with, but there was a monster out there that could potentially break free and harm his friends on the other side of that storage door. A thing like that needed to be put down as soon as possible, and for as long as possible―which, if he was lucky, it would be a couple of centuries before it rose again. He wanted desperately to jump in now and get it over with, but something held him back. This entire situation was very odd, and Kal found his own curiosity was keeping him from leaping out right then and killing the damned thing already.

It wasn’t the right time, he told himself. Good things come to those who wait.

But really, he just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thing growled, flashing a mouthful sharpened teeth like a shark’s.

“He means other demons,” said the dark-haired boy, speaking for the first time. There was a cautious edge to his voice―to his entire demeanor, really. From the tight line of his shoulders beneath his jacket, to the dark look in his eyes, to the way he gripped the blade in his hand as though he was hanging onto it for dear life at the edge of a deadly precipice, it was obvious that he, too was itching for this encounter to be over already. “You do know what a demon is, don’t you?” he asked, words dripping with sarcasm.

When Red-Leather said nothing, the blond apparently decided that it was time for a vocabulary lesson. “Demons,” he drawled, tracing the word in the air with his blade. “Religiously defined as hell’s denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension—”

“That’s _enough_ , Jace,” Isabelle interrupted.

“Isabelle’s right,” agreed the dark-haired boy. “Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics—or demonology.”

Despite his companions’ less than supportive comments, the one apparently named Jace seemed undeterred. When he smiled at the monster, it wasn’t a friendly smile―it was one of a predator that had just found its prey wounded and helpless. Kal had never seen such a look in a human’s eyes, and he thought that he never wanted to again.

“Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much,” Jace told Red-Leather, holding his hand to the side of his mouth as though they were sharing a secret. “Do you think I talk too much?”

 _Definitely,_ Kal thought.

Smartly, Red-Leather didn’t respond. When he did speak a few heartbeats later, he gave no indication that he’d heard Jace’s confession. “I could give you information.”

Jace snorted. “What information could you possibly have that would interest us?”

“I know where Valentine is.”

And just like that, all humor in the room fled like a bat out of hell. Jace’s eyes went cold, his jaw clenching, his knuckles going white on the grip of his dagger. There was no sign of his airy arrogance from just moments before. “The thing’s toying with us.” There was something cold and brittle in his voice, like his soul had frozen over.

Isabelle sighed, picking at her nails. “Just kill it already, Jace.”

Jace raised his arm, and for the first time, Kal got a first good look at his blade. It was about as long as his forearm and made of a strange substance that almost looked like pure diamond, and in the dimness of the storage room seemed to glow all on its own. Frankly, it was kind of epic, like something from a video game―but also utterly ineffective against a Greek monster.

So much for these people being smart.

But instead of laughing at their morosis like the monsters that Kal were used to, the monster began to panic, pulling more desperately at his bonds. Either he was really good at acting, or he was actually scared of the blade that Jace was wielding.

“Valentine _is_ back!” Red-Leather protested. “All the Infernal Worlds know it— _I_ know it―

“By the _Angel,”_ Jace snarled. “Every time we capture on of you bastards, you claim to know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too―he’s in hell. And you can _join him there.”_ He turned the dagger in his grip and brought it down in what should have been a killing blow to the chest…but wasn’t.

Kal saw the monster smirk a moment before it ripped free of its bonds and attacked, tackling Jace to the ground. They became of blue of black and blue, gold and red, their colours blending together until Kal could hardly tell where the boy ended and the monster began. There was a growling noise, and a cry, and a spray of dark blood that Kal couldn’t tell if it was red or black. His hands were shaking, his heart pounding—another reason he’d never been much good in battle. Panic clogged his mind, making it hard to focus on anything.

 _“HEY!”_ someone shouted.

Monster and boy both froze, heads swivelling around. Red-Leather was on Jace’s chest, bloody claws raised above his head in the stalled attempt of another blow, eyes wide. For just that moment, everything was completely still, and it was only that moment that Kal needed.

 _One breath, two…._ There was a blur of bronze as _Solas_ flew from his hand, straight as an arrow. It hit its mark in the monster’s shoulder, and everything sprang back into motion.

Red-Leather flew backwards, knocked off of Jace by a combination of the momentum of the dagger in his chest and surprise. An oily black substance unlike anything that Kal had ever seen a monster bleed positively exploded around _Solas’_ s hilt, and the thing collapsed, spazzing.

Jace scrambled to his feet, astounded, looking from the twitching monster to Kal and back again. Actually, all three of them were staring at  Kal now, just as startled as he was. Clearly, they hadn’t been expecting a Thai-German demigod to jump out from behind a pillar and save their sorry asses any more than he’d expected himself to do it.  He quickly lowered his arm and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket, attempting to look cool—or, at the very least, _not_ like he was freaking the fuck out internally.

It was Alec who spoke first. “What’s this?” he demanded, looking at Isabelle and Jace as if they might know what Kal was doing there.

Jace glanced up from inspecting his wounded arm, which he’d very quickly taken to doing once he’d regained his composure and had stopped gaping at Kal like a fish. “It’s a boy, Alec. Surely you’ve seen boys before?”

Alec flushed angrily, “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Do I?” Jace turned his scrutinizing gaze from his arm to Kal, squinting at the other boy as as if trying to activate his X-Ray vision. “Hm… A mundie boy,” he said, half to himself, “and he can see us.”

“Mundie?” Kal echoed. “I’ve been called a lot of things in a lot of different languages, but that’s a new one.” He scoffed, trying to look and sound indifferent to the whole crazy shitfuck that was this encounter. “You know, a normal person would thank me for saving their life?” he asked brusquely, brushing past Jace.

He bent over the monster’s body, which hadn’t yet disappeared, intending to retrieve _Solas_ . As he grabbed the hilt of his trusty dagger, the thing’s eyes flew open, its clawed hand grasping his wrist like something out of a horror movie, _“So be it,_ ” it hissed. _“The Forsaken will take you all.”_

“Oh, die already,” Kal snarled at it, hoping that his anger hid how shaken he was. He reached backwards for Jace’s crystal knife, knowing that it had fallen somewhere nearby. The moment his fingers curled around the cool handle, he slammed it into the monster’s chest, pulling out _Solas_ in one fell swoop.

This, finally, seemed to kill it. Red-Leatherr gave one last cry before beginning to twitch and convulse like it was having a seizure.

Kal jumped back, gripping both blades, and waited for it to crumble into sand and return to the deepest pits of Tartarus where it belonged. Instead, it began to fold in on itself like a paper map until it folded itself out of existence. Apparently that episode of Bill Nye where he talked about how eventually one could no longer fold something in half after so long was wrong, because this thing was totally gone―unless it turned itself into an atom, which was probably just about as likely as anything right about now.

He visibly staggered, eyes darting up to the trio before him. They, unlike him, seemed unfazed by Red-Leather’s disappearance, as though they were used to this sort of thing. Which meant…

_That wasn’t a monster._

“Holy shit.” Kal rubbed his eyes, as if hoping that the ichor would disappear and be replaced with golden monster dust, but it didn’t. “Oh my gods. That wasn’t a monster. What the hell…” He spun on the trio, hands up in a fighting position as if he actually knew how to fight. “Who the hell are you people? What _was_ that thing?”

“That, little boy, was a demon,” Jace drawled.

Kal tensed at the phrase ‘ _little boy_.’ “I’m _taller_ than you!” he said indignantly.

“An eidolon demon, to be exact,” Jace went on, as if he hadn’t heard Kal at all. At Kal’s confused look, he added, “A shape-changer.”

But that wasn’t why Kal was confused. He’d heard the term before—last year, when Percy Jackson was recounting their tale after the battle with Gaea. Long story short, Leo Valdez, a brilliant Hephaestus kid who had been part of the Prophecy of Seven with Percy, had been possessed when they went to the Roman demigod camp, Camp Jupiter, and had fired a ballistae on New Rome, promptly pissing off the Romans. After the newly-grouped seven hightailed it out of there, they had a similar incident in Kansas, where Percy and a son of Jupiter named Jason Grace had been possessed and promptly tried to kill each other. Apparently the things that had possessed them were _eidolons_ , spirits with the capability of possessing living beings (and occasionally, machinery) who worked for Gaea in hopes of returning to life. They were not, however, blue-haired teenage boy-looking things that folded in on themselves when killed, and they were most certainly _not_ shapeshifters.

“I know what an eidolon is, man, and _that_ was most certainly not one,” Kal said impatiently. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you? Hell, I bet _you_ don’t even know what that thing was. You’re just fucking with me at this point.” He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, too distracted to bother worrying about accidentally poking his eye out with _Solas_ , and glared furiously at the ground as though he could intimidate it into giving him answers. “Monsters crumble to dust…that thing didn’t, so it’s not a normal monster,” he mumbled to himself, the little squirrels running overtime on their wheels in his head. “If it wasn’t a normal monster, then what was it? Chiron might know…”

Alec and Jace shared a look. “What is he babbling about?” Alec asked boredly.

“I don’t know,” Jace replied, turning back to Kal. “What _are_ you babbling about?”

“Oh, cut the shit, will you?” Kal snapped, wheeling on them. “Who the hell are you guys, anyway?”

“Well—” Jace started.

 _“Jace,”_ Isabelle said admonishingly, smacking his good arm with the back of her hand. “Haven’t you told the mundane enough?” she hissed. “ _Honestly_.”

Jace lifted his eyes to Kal, and for the first time, Kal noticed that his eyes were a startling colour, like chips of amber. Almost like Hazel Levesque’s, daughter of Pluto, but not quite. Hazel’s were more like molten gold, where Jace’s were a warm honey colour unlike anything Kal had ever seen before. “He can see us, Isabelle,” Jace replied, his voice chillingly soft. “He already knows too much.”

It was a line straight out of a movie, and Kal had to suppress the urge to put his hands up and say that he didn’t want any trouble now. Had literally anyone else said it, Kal might have laughed, but here, with Jace’s amber eyes fixated on him, he didn’t feel much like laughing. A pit of dread had pooled in his stomach, which was a very horrid feeling.

“So, then, what should we do with him?” asked Isabelle, running her hands over the black-coated whip in her hand, staining her palms with the ghastly ichor. She cocked her hip and looked at Kal as though she was preparing to use it on him—momentarily, the thought _damn, that’s kinky_ ran through his mind, but he quickly pushed it away, annoyed with himself. Seriously? He was probably about to die and his brain decided to think _that_?

“Come on, now, guys,” Kal said. “Let’s be civil and not resort to overused tropes, yeah?”

But, as expected, his input went ignored.

“Maybe we should bring him back with us,” said Alec after a moment, though the very suggestion seemed to make him want to be physically ill. “I bet Hodge would like to talk to him.”

“We are _not_ bringing a mundie back to the Institute!” Isabelle protested.

“Maybe he’s not a mundane,” Jace suggested, still in that quiet voice. His eyes hadn’t left Kal’s face, as though he were searching for something that he couldn’t quite find. “Have you had dealings with demons, little boy? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you—”

Kal’s patience growing thin, he cut Jace off. “Yes, I totally have dealings with demons. Moloch makes my coffee every morning, and Abbadon tucks me in at night,” he drawled, his words so drenched with sarcasm that he could barely taste the original flavour. Surprise widened the eyes of the other three, though whether it was at his snark or at his minimal knowledge of the names of Greater Demons, he wasn’t certain. If it was the latter, he was fairly sure that they wouldn’t be so impressed if they knew that he only knew them because of Tumblr. “And my name isn’t “little boy,” you pretentious son of a b—”

Before Kal could finish his sentence (hint: it was not going to be “you pretentious son of a biscuit eater”), another voice interrupted him.

“ _Kal?”_

As he was facing the door, he only had to look up to see who it was. The other three, who were in between him and the door, whirled around in a way that was almost comical— _almost._

Ren, who had been standing at the door a moment before, rushed him without warning. Completely ignoring the other three people in the room, even as she almost ran straight into Jace―he side-stepped at the last second, surprisingly casual about nearly being barrelled over by the pink-haired, black bombshell that was Ren―she tackled Kal into a hug.

“Oh my gods, I was so worried! When I didn’t see you in the crowd, I thought…” She trailed off, noticing for the first time that his jacket and shirt were splattered with black. “What happened?”

“Monster,” he said automatically. “I took care of it.”

She furrowed her brow at him. “All by yourself?”

Kal frowned, about to say that yeah, technically he took it down by himself, but he was completely alone, but then her words sank in and realization dawned on him. Ren hadn’t so much as glanced at the three since she’d arrived, which was totally unlike her. She certainly would have mentioned them, maybe made some sort of inappropriate comment that he would groan at and smack her for, but she hadn’t. Which meant…

Kal’s throat felt tight. When he glanced at the others, he saw his confirmation in Isabelle’s smirk. Jace teasingly waved his hand right in front of Ren’s face, who didn’t so much as blink.

_She can’t see them._

As if from a distance, Kal heard himself say, “I, uh… Yeah. It was no big deal.”

“You missed half of my set,” Ren said, still looking concerned. “I was so worried that I forgot the words to _Kicking and Screaming._ ”

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, and it was genuine. The fact that she might have messed up her band’s shot at ever playing here again because of his antics made that leaden blanket of guilt snuggle around his heart.

“It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re alright.” When she took his hand and lead him back out onto the dancefloor, he let her, but his mind was still reeling.

He heard Isabelle laugh before the storage door closed behind him.

 

~

 

The rest of a night was a blur. SWACOR performed the rest of their set, but Kal couldn’t find it in him to pay much attention at all. He had a headache, and the ichor on his clothing was making his skin itch, though he wasn’t sure if it was actually making him itch or if it was all in his head, a psychological side effect of the mind fuck that had been his encounter with those guys. He still couldn’t quite believe it had actually happened, but the fact that Ren had seen the monster’s blood, or ichor, or whatever, meant that his killing the thing had at least been real. Kal might’ve thought that he’d imagined the trio―Shadow-killers, or something, right?―had it not been for the fact that a.) it wouldn’t make much sense with the sequence of events and b.) he didn’t have the imagination to come up with something that weird.

By the end of the night, Kal was just ready to go home. Being the diligent half-brother he was, he of course helped them pack up their instruments into the van. Then he’d loaded up in the back of the truck with Ren so that they could drop him off at home.

Though it had been over an hour since the encounter with those guys, the entire thing played in his head like a movie on repeat―Isabelle’s golden whip tying the monster to the pillar, the great cry it gave when it ripped free, Jace’s tawny eyes and his face flecked with blood―over and over and over. He could see it clearly in the darkness of the back seat, as though the images were inlaid on the surface of his eyes.

“Hey, are you okay?” Ren asked, crawling in beside him. “You’ve been spacey ever since whatever happened in that storage room.” She placed her hand gently on his arm, her worried gaze flicking from the ichor still staining his shirt to his face again.

Even though he’d done his best to hide it from those guys back there, killing that monster, or whatever it was, had really shaken him. All the monsters he’d taken down before were things he’d recognized, gorgons and minotaurs and scythian dracaenae―Greek creepy-crawlies that he could trace back to myth and that always shed whatever human-esque disguise they donned once he knew what they were. But this thing tonight…it wasn’t like anything he’d ever faced before. It had remained so human-looking until the end, the only thing betraying its true nature were its eyes. But those eyes wouldn’t leave her alone.

Maybe if he told Ren…

“I’m fine,” Kal responded, hating how easily the lie rolled off his tongue. For some reason, he felt the bizarre need to keep this to himself. At least until he figured out how this would impact, what it all meant. “Just…tired.”

“It wasn’t a dracaena, was it?”

He shook his head. “Definitely _wasn’t_ a dracaena.”

“Oh.” Ren pulled back, looking like she wanted to say something more. After a moment, she spoke up again. “If there’s something going on with you, you’d tell me, right?”

Kal blinked. “Of course.”

“And you know that you can trust me with anything, right?”

“Of course.” _Just not with this. Not yet._

“Okay.” Ren seemed to be satisfied. She went to staring out the window as Miranda, behind the wheel, pulled out of the parking spot and started down the street.

Kal gazed out at the city flashing by outside the car windows and wondered just what this night meant, what it would change. What meeting those Shadow-fighter folks would do to the rest of his life. He knew that there was more out there than he’d ever thought of. First there were just Greek gods, now Roman, and Egyptian, and Norse… What would these people have to do with any of that? What could this new discovery introduce to his ever-broadening vision of the world? All he knew in that moment was that his life was never going to be the same again.

He had no idea just how right he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been wanted to do a crossover between these two series for a while. In fact, I did try one a while ago, but I didn't like the way it turned out so I deleted it.
> 
> The song used above is Paralyzer by Finger Eleven.


	2. Chapter Two

#  **CHAPTER TWO**

 

 _Thud._ The knife hit the heart of the target, sliding into the circle of oak stump like the wood was butter.

Kal crossed his room and yanked the knife out of the target without so much as a smile. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to practice with his knives in the house―Jocelyn had forbidden it after he’d left a hole in the drywall and nearly busted a pipe―but he needed to blow off steam, and he was not going to drive the hour and a half to Camp Half-Blood just to distract himself for a little bit. And anyway, Jocelyn wasn’t even home, anyway.

Standing at the far wall from where he’d situated the oak stump on his desk, Kal held one of his practice blades in his hand and lined up the shot. _Breath in...and out….Breath in….and_ ―

Thud.

Each time he released a blade, he pictured his memories from the previous night as the target. Killing the memories in his mind was the only way to keep them from overtaking him, destroying him from the inside out.

_The fiery arch of Isabelle’s golden whip._

Thud.

_Red-Leather snarling as it ripped free and launched itself on Jace._

Thud.

_The sickening squelch of flesh as Kal stabbed the monster in the heart._

Thud.

_“That, little boy, was a demon.”_

Thud.

Every time he ran out of blades, he’d go over, collect them, and start again.

It was around noon when his routine was interrupted by the ringing of his phone― _Bop To The Top_ from _Highschool Musical_ , the song he’d set as Ren’s ringtone as a joke after she’d confessed to him her love for those dorky movies. He reached over his bed and grabbed his phone from his bedside table, fumbling with the buttons a little bit before managing to hit the _answer_ button.

“Hey, Sharpay,” Kal said into the receiver. “What’s bopping?”

She groaned, like she always did when he said that, and said, _“Not me, that’s for sure.”_

Kal grinned, the routine response feeling oddly reassuring. “Glad to hear it. What’s up?”

_“Well, the entire band’s planning on heading out to get coffee before practice Wanna join?”_

“Where?”

“ _Java Jones,”_ Ren responded. Java Jones was a coffee shop around the corner from where Kal lived and had kind of become their go-to hangout whenever they just wanted to feel normal for once. _“James is buying~”_ she added in a sing-song voice, knowing what a cheapass her best friend was.

Kal looked down at the dagger in his hands, running his fingers over the cool steel. “When are you heading back to camp?”

_“Probably around four-ish, depending on how things go. Why?”_

He glanced at the long blade sitting on his desk beside the target, crystal blade gleaming in the sunlight streaming in through his window. “I need to talk to Chiron about something, that’s all,” he replied. “Coffee sounds fantastic. See you soon?”

 _“Twenty minutes at most. We just picked up Monty.”_ Montel Debeaux, SWACOR’s bass guitar player, lived in Queens with his mom. He was the only one in the band who wasn’t a year-round camper―James’ mother had died when he was thirteen in a monster attack, Miranda had run away because of familial reasons that she refused to talk about, and Ren’s aunt had kicked her out when Ren came out to her as bisexual. _“See you then, Ryan.”_

Ren hung up before Kal could chide her on calling him that.

Kal dropped the phone onto his bedspread and, after a moment of deliberation, he walked over to his desk. But he ignored the target, instead turning his attention on the blade lying just to the right of it.

About ten minutes after they’d left the storage room and Ren had gone back on stage last night, Kal realized that he was still holding the blonde boy’s strange weapon in his hands. He’d quickly returned to the storage room with the full intention of returning it, but they weren’t there any more. The trio had vanished like smoke, leaving only the splatter of ichor on his clothes and that dagger to prove that they even existed.

Kal might have just left the blade there just to be rid of it, but he found himself unable to do so. He was insanely curious about what it was, what it was made of. The blade seemed to be made of some sort of crystal, the hilt a plain metal tube without any sort of a guard. He’d never seen anything like it, and that was saying something considering the variety in Camp Half-Bloods stash of celestial bronze weapons.

Seeing Chiron was on the top of his list right now―if anyone were to know anything about this blade, it would be Chiron―but before Ren’s call, he hadn’t had a good excuse to go to camp. Kal would have to ask permission from Jocelyn, explain to her why he was going to Long Island and that he wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours, and he couldn’t tell her about the dagger. She’d already freaked out enough when he’d told her about Camp Half-Blood two summers ago, after the Titan War. If he told her about these Shadow-stalker guys, he had no idea how she’d react.

With a sigh, Kal turned from the blade and yanked his knives out of the target. He needed to stash it away in the back of his closet before Jocelyn got back, and get dressed, because there was no way in hell that he was going to Java Jones in his ratty sleep shirt and basketball shorts.

Fifteen minutes later, all evidence of his illegal practice had been hidden away and he was dressed―t-shirt and jeans, totally inconspicuous. He thought about wearing his jacket to hide the slight bulge of _Solas’s_ sheath under his shirt, but it was too damn hot out there for that. August in Brooklyn was a bitch.

He was just tying his shoes when he heard the faint sound of the apartment door being unlocked. Kal quickly finished with his laces and hurried out of his bedroom, making sure that the crystal dagger was tucked away out of sight before he went. The hallway that lead into the living room was short and wide, the living room itself as familiar to him as the back of his own hand. The pale blue-and-white flower print of the wallpaper, the dark red sofa with the handmade throw pillows, the gorgeous paintings created by none other Jocelyn Fray herself, the white bookshelves with a variety of content and little knick knacks arranged carefully on the shelves.

On the mantle was a framed photograph that Kal had spent hours staring at when he was seven years old, so long that if he closed his eyes he could picture every little detail of it. Two young women, one with long, dark red hair tied up into a bun at the base of of her neck, the other with short dark hair and dark slanted eyes and a smile that could light up the whole world. The red-haired woman was Jocelyn, Kal’s adoptive mother and current guardian. The other was his birth mother and Jocelyn’s best friend, Marina Heiler, who had died nine years previously.

But none of this was what he came out to see. His gaze went to the door, where Luke was emerging with what appeared to be a stack of flattened cardboard boxes in his arms. He set the boxes down along the wall and turned to Kal, a smile on his face.

“Hey, Luke,” Kal said, raising a hand in greeting. “Need any help?”

“No, thanks. I got it.” Luke stretched out his arms, groaning when something popped. He was dressed as he usually was, in a flannel shirt and old blue jeans and work boots, his thin wire glasses bent at the bridge so that they never sat quite right on his nose. With the stubble on his chin and the scruff of his short brown hair, Luke had that sort of well-worn, outdoorsy type sort of look to him.

“Where’s Jocelyn?” Even after nine years of living with her, of being Jocelyn’s adopted son, Kal had never called her mom. She’d been “Aunty Joss” first, when he’d been too young to pronounce her name properly, and after his mother died, it felt weird to refer to anyone else as his mom. He’d long since gotten over the initial weirdness of it, but she would always be Jocelyn to him.

“Parking the truck.” Luke rubbed at his shoulder. “Remind me again why this building has no service elevator?”

Kal grinned. “Because the gods want to torture you.”

Luke snorted. He knew about Camp Half-Blood, about Kal’s godly heritage. After a year of knowing and being able to process it, he’d finally seemed to be accustomed to it―though there were still times that Kal would say something jokingly and Luke thought he was being serious, or the other way around.

“What’re the boxes for?” Kal asked, leaning against the wall.

“Jocelyn just wanted to pack up a few things, put them in storage. You know she never throws anything out.” He waved it off, as though it didn’t really matter at all. “So, what’re you up to? Studying?”

Kal shook his head, dark hair falling in his eyes. “Nah. I was about to head out, meet Ren at Java Jones. James is buying us all coffee to celebrate how their gig went last night.”

“Sounds like fun.” Luke had knelt by the chrome toolbox sitting at the foot of the sofa, apparently looking for something inside it. “You planning on heading back to camp with them?”

The image of the crystal dagger flashed in his mind. “Probably,” Kal responded.

“Aha!” Luke pulled out the plastic tape gun and held it up triumphantly, like he was playing Capture the Flag and had just won for his team. “If you do go out, don’t forget to tell Jocelyn. You know how she worries when she doesn’t know where you are.”

Kal nodded. “Will do.”

He turned to head back into his room and grab his bag, but paused. He thought again of the night before, of those Shadow-whatevers and how they’d stood right in front of Ren without her being able to see them. As demigods, he and Ren were often able to see right through the Mist fairly easily. The fact that Ren hadn’t seen them at all meant that either they were powerful enough to control the Mist as well as monsters could, or they’d been using another type of illusionary magic that Ren, for whatever reason, couldn’t see through. But Kal could.

“Luke?” Kal asked.

“Mmhm?”

“What would you do if you saw something that no one else could see?”

There was a loud clattering noise. When Kal spun back around, Luke was picking up the tape gun from where he’d dropped it. “You mean if I could see through that Mist thing you talk about?” he asked cautiously.

Kal hesitated. “Kind of. But no one else who could usually see through it could see this thing.”

“...You lost me.”

“I mean, I think I saw something last night, but whatever illusion it used, Ren couldn’t see through it,” Kal blurted before he could think better of it.

Luke’s face took on a troubled cast. When he looked at Kal over his glasses, his eyes suddenly seemed impossibly blue without the fog of the lenses. “I think this is a question better suited for someone at camp, Kal.”

There was something strange in his voice that Kal couldn’t quite decipher. Before he had the chance to even attempt to, the door opened again, pulling their attention to it, and in walked Jocelyn Fray.

She was a tall, slim woman, and despite the slightness of her build was quite sturdily built. With her dark red hair tied up like that, just a few strands escaping to curl around her face, she looked as though the picture on the mantle had just been taken earlier that day. She wore a pair of paint-splattered overalls and brown hiking boots, her usual work outfit, and Kal noticed with some amusement that she’d stuck a pencil behind her ear. Naturally, she looked nothing like him, but though they weren’t blood-related, she’d never treated him as anything but her own son―for better or for worse.

“Sorry it took me so long to find a parking place. There must be a million people at the park today, I swear,” she said, handing Luke his the keys to his truck. “Thank you for bringing up the boxes.” She turned to Kal. “Oh! You’re dressed. Where’re you going?”

Kal might have told her that just because he was dressed didn’t mean that he was going somewhere, but he usually didn’t get dressed (read: wear anything other than shorts and a t-shirt) unless he was planning on heading out, so he couldn’t. “I’m meeting Ren and the others at Java Jones. I might head back to camp with them afterwards―I mean, if that’s okay,” he added quickly, seeing the look on her face.

“That’s probably for the best,” Jocelyn said, and Kal’s alarm bells rang.

He glanced at the boxes again. “What’re the boxes really for?”

Jocelyn bit her lower lip, glancing at Luke. “Luke and I are planning to go to the farmhouse for the rest of the summer,” she responded. “It it possible for you to stay at camp?”

And just like that, Kal knew something was wrong. Jocelyn would not have asked Kal to stay at camp for so long unless something was happening, something bad. “I―I mean, yeah, I probably can. What’s going on?”

“I just need to get away, that’s all,” Jocelyn told him, and he knew she was lying. “I thought that you would prefer to be at camp with Ren and the others than with us.”

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong―?”

There was a crashing noise, making mother and adopted son start. Luke had apparently knocked into one of the framed pictures leaning against the wall. He bent to set it back up again, and when he straightened, he headed for the door. “I’m leaving.”

“Wait.” Jocelyn followed him out the door and into the hall. From where Kal was standing, he could just barely hear her words. “…Marina wanted me to keep him safe, Luke.”

 _Mom…?_ Kal furrowed his brow.

“Would Marina have wanted you to do this?” Luke asked her. “Lie to him like this?”

“It’s my only choice!” Jocelyn responded in an urgent whisper. “If he knows the truth about who he is, about _what_ he is―”

Luke frowned at her. “He’s going to find out eventually.”

Jocelyn shook her head. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Suddenly, she jumped back, slamming into the half-closed door. A moment later, Kal realized why―Ren’s poked her head between them, pink hair vivid even in the darkness of the hall. “Hi,” she said. “I’m here to pick up Kal.”

Kal waved to her from inside. “Just a second, let me grab my bag,” he called to her. A minute later, after he’d snatched his messenger bag from where it lay on his bed and slung it across his body, he emerged from the apartment. “Ready!” He glanced at Jocelyn on his way out. “We can finish this later, right?”

His adoptive mother nodded. “I suppose so. Be safe, okay?”

He grinned at her. “Will do, Aunty Joss,” is what he said, but was he was thinking was, _I’m a demigod, Aunty Joss. When am I ever safe?_

 

~

 

“The band’s already settled over there.” Ren gestured across the coffee shop to a corner booth in the way back, where Kal could pick out the familiar figures of three of his half-siblings sitting in a booth with faded blue seats. Miranda was laughing at something that Montel had said, the vibrant sound carrying across the shop. It was nice to see her laugh. “I’ll get you a coffee. What do you want?”

“Iced mocha latte,” Kal responded. Seeing the questioning look his best friend shot him, he said, “What? It suits my inner diva.”

Ren snorted and shook her head, heading off to the bar. Kal made a beeline for the back, raising his hand to catch their attention.

James grinned when he noticed Kal. “Yo, Kal!”

After seeing James in a leather vest, skinny jeans, and decked out Doc Martens, it was really weird seeing him in a regular t-shirt and jeans. He was the kind of guy that looked amazing no matter what he wore, with that tousled dark brown hair and sharp jawline and long lashes that most girls would kill for. James was a pretty chill guy, but that didn’t keep Kal from secretly hating James for how easy he had it when it came to his looks.

“Hey, James,” Kal said, sliding into the chair opposite of the table. “Montel, Miranda. Fantastic morning, eh?”

Montel snorted. “I gather you didn’t hear Dad’s wake up call?”

“Oh, no, I did. We’ve really got to get him into something _other_ that Bon Jovi. As much as I like _You Give Love A Bad Name,_ it does wear on one after a while.” One of the downsides to being a kid of Apollo was that, while Apollo is awesome, he isn’t afraid to flaunt that. Every morning when he took his sun chariot into the sky, his various sons and daughters were treated to a blaring alarm from the radio of his chariot that only they could hear. Fun.

Miranda stuck a finger in her ear and flinched, as if she could hear Jon Bon Jovi’s dulsetory tones even now. “Ugh, tell me about it.”

Miranda was the only one in the band that didn’t dress much differently at all when on stage. She usually kind of dressed like a regular at the Pandemonium Club anyway, with the ripped jeans and the heavy combat boots (the boots made for stomping, not the ones for walking all over you) and chains and the plastic bracelets. Today she wore a skull top that fell off her shoulder and was cut large at the arms, exposing a little bit more of her black bra underneath than a parental figure would probably approve of and ripped up Levis that were so cut up beneath the knee that they might as well have been shorts. Her turquoise hair was tied up into a ponytail, showing off the large cross she had hanging from one ear, and her eyeliner was impeccable. Her shiny black lipstick reminded Kal a little bit too much of the daemon’s ichor from the night before.

Suddenly, a hand tapped Kal on the shoulder. It was a girl sitting at the table behind them. She was kind of cute, in a shy way, with golden hair that fell in soft ringlets around her face and green eyes and a smattering of freckles across her nose. “Excuse me,” she said. “Is that your girlfriend?”

Kal followed the line of her finger to where Ren stood at the counter, just picking up two coffee cups, and almost snorted. “Uh, no, she isn’t,” he replied, resisting the urge to add _that would be illegal._

The girl perked. “She’s cute. She isn’t into girls by any chance, is she?”

He was spared from having to respond by Ren’s timely return, brandishing two styrofoam cups with the Java Jones logo on one side. “Iced mocha latte for the queen,” Ren announced, setting it down in front of Kal on the table. He snorted and moved over so she could sit next to him. “So, what’re we talking about?” Ren chirped.

“That girl over there who thinks that you’re the hot diggity damn,” James replied slyly, a smirk curling his lips.

Ren glanced at the blonde girl sitting at the table over, who suddenly seemed very absorbed in her manga, and a smile split her face. “Really?”

Kal nodded and shifted in his seat. “Well, she did say that you were cute and asked if you were into girls,” he replied, taking a drink of his coffee. Ahhh, chocolaty icy goodness. He didn’t understand how they could drink hot coffee when it was positively sweltering outside.

“Oh.” Ren was positively beaming now. “Well, then.”

“Go talk to her,” Kal suggested.

She did not need to be asked twice. Taking a long slurp of her probably scalding coffee like it was a shot of liquid courage, Ren quickly got up again and popped over to the blonde girl’s table to say hello. Kal shook his head and chuckled into his iced latte. “Crazy kids.”

“Don’t suppose you could hook a brother up too, eh?” James asked.

Kal kicked his leg under the table.

“Ow, ow, okay. I’ll take that as a maybe?”

“I swear to the gods, I _will_ kick you again, man.”

James put his hands up in surrender. “Ohhhkay. Dropping the matter.”

“So, Kal, you were in the crowd last night,” Miranda said, leaning forward. “What’d you think? Did we do good?”

He nodded. “You guys looked and sounded great up there,” he told them honestly. “Though I don’t know how reassuring that is coming from someone with no musical talent whatsoever, so…”

“No musical talent whatsoever?” Montel repeated, raising a brow. “Apparently you don’t remember karaoke night.”

“Ohhh, yeah!” Miranda grinned. “You _killed_ it at _Hit Me Baby One More Time_!”

Kal groaned, pressing his hands over his ears to block out both the memory and the sound of their laughter. “I thought we agreed never to talk about that again!” He turned to Montel and shot him the most venomous glare he could muster. “ _Non posso crederti._ ”

Montel only smiled in response.

Sulking, Kal went to take another sip of his latte, only to get a noseful of ice. “I hate all of you,” he said, getting out of his chair. “And James, you owe me a ten.”

Rolling his eyes, James took a ten dollar bill out of his wallet and tossed it on the table. Kal snatched it up and slung his bag over his shoulder. After pausing to toss his empty cup in the trash, he headed for the counter, where the 19-year-old barista was busy flipping through an edition of _Sports Illustrated._ Wendy, as displayed by her name tag, glanced up at Kal approached.

“Can I help you?” Wendy-the-barista asked. She brushed her two-toned blonde hair out of her eyes, revealing a silver ring piercing her eyebrow.

“Yeah, an iced mocha latte, please.”

“Coming right up.”

Kal hung back while he waited, casting his gaze over to where Ren was chatting up the blonde girl. They seemed to be getting along pretty well, if their body language was anything to go by. And, Kal thought with a smile, they looked pretty cute together. He liked seeing Ren happy.

A sound reached his ears―the distinct sound of someone clearing their throat, too loudly and too pointedly to be real. Kal turned toward it, and immediately wished that he hadn’t.

Leaning against the wall by the door, just a few feet away, was a complete unwelcome and familiar face. It was the blond Shadow-fucker from the night before, because of course it was. Kal knew that last night wouldn’t be the last he’d seen of them. He’d only wished that he’d had a little bit more time to prepare before they Shadow-poofed back into his life.

He’d ditched the hooded jacket but otherwise seemed to be wearing the same clothes from the night before, though he wasn’t bloody anymore. His arms were bare, smooth tan skin broken up by twisting white lines that looked disturbingly like scars. Vambraces made of a dull silver metal circled his wrists, gleaming in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the door.

The blond smirked at him, raising his left hand in greeting. Kal saw a flash of white sticking out from under the vambrace―what appeared to be the carved ivory handle of some sort of dagger. As Kal watched, the blond―Jace, Kal recalled―detached himself from the wall and headed past him to the door nonchalantly, as if he were really doing nothing more than taking a stroll.

Kal let out a growl low in his throat. This Shadowfucker was leaving just like that? Hades no.

He barely heard it when Wendy told him the cost. Kal’s gaze was still locked on the door, glaring at the spot where Jace had disappeared. He handed over James’s ten―“Keep the change,” he heard himself say, and then he was out the door, not even bothering to actually grab his latte.

 

~

 

Kal pushed the door open, betting his bonnet that Jace had up and dusted. To his surprise, Jace was waiting there for him, leaning against the wall of the alley and picking at his nails with the bone knife that Kal had noticed earlier. As the door fell shut with a clang, Jase looked up and slid his dagger back into the cuff.

“Why are you following me?” Kal demanded.

Jace raised a blonde brow. “Who says I’m following you? Maybe I came for coffee.”

“Of course, what am I thinking? Even idiots like an espresso every now and then.” Kal scowled. “ _Please._ You’re so obvious that it’s ridiculous. Now, are you going to tell me what this is about or should I just kick your ass?”

“Kick my ass, you say?” Jace snorted. “What makes you think that you could beat me in a fight, little boy?”

“Maybe the fact that I saved your life last night, or do you recall?” Okay, it was true that Kal had taken down whatever that was last night, but he was still terrible at hand-to-hand. Saying that he could kick Jace’s ass was total and utter Minotaur shit, but Kal was good at bluffing. “And by the way, I have a name, you know. I’m sure you like calling me “little boy” to boost your ego or something, but my name is Kal. Use it.”

“I would have been fine,” Jace said, his eyes darkening, “had you not stepped in. Can you say the same?”

“Of course. I’ve taken down a Hydra. Compared to that, Little Mr. Red Jacket was easy.” Once again, a lie. Kal had faced a hydra before, once, but he hadn’t killed it by himself. Not that he was going to tell Jace that, now that the blond was looking at him with something like thinly veiled awe.

“Let me see your right hand.”

“My…?” Kal was startled enough that he actually complied, holding his hand out palm-up. He jumped when Jace grabbed his wrist and turned it over, those golden eyes studying the back of his hand as though it were an ancient manuscript in a language that Jace only knew the basics of. There was something that seemed incredibly intimate about this stranger holding his hand, calloused fingers brushing over the pulse point of Kal’s wrist, though he knew that the gesture wasn’t romantic in any way shape or form.

Kal honestly didn’t understand what it was about his hand that was so fascinating to Jace, for, after all, they were just normal hands―his knuckles were a little big for his fingers, he supposed, his nails chipped and bitten, the pads of his middle and ring fingers calluses from those times he forgot to wear finger guards when practicing archery. There was a two-year-old scar across the base of his palm from an accident with his throwing knives. Other than that, they weren’t much to look at.

“Nothing,” Jace muttered to himself, dropping Kal’s hand. If Kal hadn’t known better, he might have thought that the blond sounded disappointed. “You’re not left-handed, are you?”

“Last time I checked, no. Why?”

“Most Shadowhunter children get Marked on their right hands―or left, if they’re left-handed, like I am―when they’re still young. It’s a permanent rune that lends an extra skill with weapons.” He held up his left hand, showing off a tattoo that Kal hadn’t really noticed before. A swirling design almost like that of an eye was etched darkly across his knuckles.

Kal crossed his arms over his chest. “Sweet tattoo. What’s your point?”

“My point is, you don’t have one. Either you’re not one of us, or…” Jace trailed off, shaking his head.

“Or, what?”

But Jace didn’t answer. He just frowned, that intensity returning to his gaze. Kal thought strangely of the Athena kids, how sometimes they would stare at you with those fascinating grey eyes like you were a complicated bit of machinery and they were trying to figure out how you worked. It was disturbing enough when _they_ did it, but when it was Jace… Kal suddenly felt as though he were as transparent as glass and that Jace could see complete through him. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

“ _Yoohoo_ ,” Kal said, waving his hand in front of Jace’s face. “Uh, you were saying something?”

Jace’s gold eyes lifted to him, inquisitive. “You seem to be a mundane like any other mundane, but you can see me,” he said, half to himself. “And then there’s the matter of you killing the eidolon… It’s a conundrum.”

“What’s a mundane?” The only time Kal had ever heard the term used before, it was used to describe something being dull or uninteresting, like Maths class. Given that Jace had specifically said “a” mundane, Kal figured that it meant something different here.

“Someone of the human world,” Jace replied. “Someone like you.”

Oh. “I’m not a mundane, then,” Kal said. “I’m a demigod. If anything, you’re probably more human than I am.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them. Jace’s eyebrows shot up at the word _demigod,_ more out of surprise than seemingly anything else. “Demigod?” he repeated curiously.

“Yeah. You know, half mortal, half god. Not God, with the capital G―god, as in part of a pantheon. The Greek Pantheon, to be exact. You see that shiny bright thing up there in the sky?” Kal asked, pointing up.

Jace followed the line of his finger. “....The sun?”

“That’s my dad up there.” Kal paused. “Or well, technically, what you’re seeing is the outside of his sun chariot, but he’s up there driving it.”

Maybe if Jace thought he was crazy, these Shadow-plumbers would leave him alone. Unfortunately, it almost seemed like Jace were considering the possibility of the gods existing, which only made Kal wonder more just who the hell this guy was.

“Huh.” Jace turned back to Kal, something new in his gaze. “Interesting.”

Kal pinched the bridge of his nose. That was not a face that said _dude wtf are you smoking_ , that was a face that said _hm this person may have a point._ His evil plan had ultimately failed. Shit.

Well, might as well humor the psychopath. “Okay, so, you said that mundanes are regular humans,” Kal said, “which makes it sound like that you don’t consider yourself to be human. If you’re not human, pray tell, then what the fuck are you?”

Jace’s lips quirked up. “We’re called Shadowhunters―or, at least, that’s what we call ourselves. We kill demons.”

“Of course you do. I suppose you also have a _totally platonic_ dudebro angel in a trenchcoat and a younger brother who’s buttbuddies with Lucifer?”

Naturally, Jace seemed to not have any idea what Kal was referencing. Apparently they didn’t have Netflix on the Shadowhunter home planet. He opened his mouth as though he was going to say something, but seemed to think better of it. Without acknowledging Kal’s snark, Jace glanced up at the sky. “Well, according to your father, it looks like it’s time to go.” There was nothing sardonic in his tone, but Kal still felt like he was being mocked.

“Go?” Kal snorted. “What makes you think that I’m going anywhere with you, Blondie?”

“Hodge said I have to bring you to the Institute with me,” Jace replied. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Who is Hodge and why does he want to talk to me?”

“Hodge is my tutor, and I can only imagine why he wants to talk you. Maybe it’s because you’re the first mundane to know about us in over a century. Or maybe it’s because you managed to kill an eidolon without any known Shadowhunter training.” He shrugged airily, as if it really didn’t matter to him at all, but there was something in his eyes that seemed troubled. “Look, he can explain it better than I can, and you don’t really have a choice. You can come willingly or not, it’s no matter to me.”

“Are you threatening to _kidnap_ me?”

“If you want to look at it that way,” Jace said, tawny eyes glittering, “yes.”

Kal growled at him. “Oh, I’d like to see you try, pretty boy. I’ve faced monsters that could crush you under their heel, you sanctimonious pri―”

He was cut off before he could finish, again, (and no, he was not about to say “you sanctimonious prince of Cuba) by the jolt of his phone vibrating in the pocket of his jeans. Kal nearly jumped out of his skin at the sensation and fumbled to pull it out, only to see that Jocelyn was calling him. A pit of dread pooled in his stomach. Jocelyn knew how dangerous it was for him to use his cell―she wouldn’t call unless something was seriously important. He answered it immediately.

“Jocelyn? What’s wrong?” Kal demanded.

 _“Oh, Kal, oh thank God.”_ There was a horrid crackle of panic in Jocelyn’s voice, and Kal felt his heart clench. “ _I need you to listen to me, Kalon. Get to camp. You have to get to camp, and stay there. Don’t you come back, not now. Please.”_ In the background, there was a loud thumping sound, like something heavy had been knocked to the ground.

“Jocelyn, what’s going on? What’s happening?” Even if the noise hadn’t alarmed him, her use of his full name would have. Jocelyn never called him Kalon unless he was in trouble or when she was talking about his mom and was swept up in the past, because she knew how much he hated it.

 _“Get ahold of Luke as soon as you can. Tell him that―tell him that Valentine’s alive and that he’s found me_ ―” The rest of her words were drowned out by a splintering crash like something had broken through a door.

Terror iced Kal’s veins. “Val―?” Why did that name sound familiar? “Jocelyn, please, _what is going on?”_

 _“I_ ― _I can’t_ ―” Jocelyn cut herself off. _“Just, please get to Luke! You have to get to Luke. Kalon, I love y_ ―”

And that was when the line went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to separate this from the original as much as possible, but I found it next to impossible to take Jocelyn and Luke out of the story. (And besides, I like them as characters, so...) I toyed with the idea of Kal being their next-door neighbor instead of Jocelyn's adopted kid, but I didn't quite like the idea so I tossed it.
> 
> -Ryan and Sharpay Evans are two characters, twin brother and sister, from the movie High School Musical. One of the songs that they perform together is Bop To The Top.
> 
> -The idea for Apollo blasting music from the sun chariot that only his kids could hear is not my own. It's from a headcanon post I found on Pinterest, and I don't know who came up with it originally, so I'm sorry, but just know that it's not my idea.
> 
> -The boots that are made for walking is a reference to the song by Nancy Sinatra called, appropriately, These Boots Are Made For Walking.
> 
> -The cute girl who was hitting on Ren may or may not be based off of my girlfriend in real life. (Hehe.)
> 
> -The "totally platonic dudebro angel in a trenchcoat and a younger brother who’s buttbuddies with Lucifer" is a reference to Supernatural, for those of who don't know. Good show. I recommend, if you're okay with a rollercoaster of feels.
> 
> -For those of you who don't have a fascination with words, "Kalon" is a Greek word that means "Ideal perfect beauty in the physical and moral sense, especially as perceived by Greek philosophers." I just liked the way that it looked as a name, to be honest.


	3. Chapter Three

#  **CHAPTER THREE**

 

Kal stared at the phone in his hand, disbelieving. This could not be happening. Jocelyn had not just called him and told him to go to camp. She had not just told him that someone had found her, someone who was probably trying to kill her right now. Nope, nop, nope. This wasn’t happening.

“Kal, what’s going?” Jace asked, his hand falling on Kal’s shoulder. There was something shockingly tender in his voice― _ concern _ .

“Shut up,” Kal snapped at him, biting the end of his thumb. His phone was almost dead, and Kal didn’t want to risk calling Luke from here. But there were bigger things to worry about right now, such as: Who was this Valentine asshole, and what did he want with Jocelyn?

It was in glancing at Jace that he suddenly recalled where he’d heard the name Valentine before. “Holy Hera!” he exclaimed, spinning to face the Shadowhunter. “That thing at the Pandemonium that I killed, it said a name. Valentine, right?”

Jace flinched, almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Why?”

“Who is that?”

“A bad guy,” Jace responded after a moment. There was something defensive in his tone, giving Kal the impression that Jace had a personal grudge against whoever it was. “He’s dead now, has been for a long time. Why does it matter?”

“I’ll explain later,” Kal said quickly. “Right now, we have to get going.”

“Why?”

“Well, unless you feel like fighting, we need to move.” Kal started down the street toward home, knowing without needing to look back that Jace was following him. “I don’t know why, but technology doesn’t like demigods. Whenever we use a cellphone, I guess it sends out some sort of sound wave announcing to any monsters within a so-many-mile-radius that there’s a demigod here. Basically the equivalent of getting a megaphone and shouting, “ _ YOOHOO, MONSTER PALS! DEMIGOD BUFFET RIGHT HERE! TODAY’S SPECIAL _ ― _ STRINGY SON OF APOLLO WITH A SIDE OF BACON!” _ ”

Jace made a noise almost like a snort. “Really?”

Kal nodded, glancing back at him. “We don’t use them very often outside of camp for that exact reason, especially if we’re unarmed. It was lucky that I even had my phone  _ on _ me to be honest.” And he fell silent.

Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the walk. Kal felt extremely jittery the entire time, every little movement in the corner of his eye becoming a monster ready to leap out and swallow him whole or offer him a tasty free sample from a deli―he wasn’t sure which would be more terrifying. Even Jace seemed to be on edge; he’d drawn his bone knife and gripped it tightly, gold eyes flicking about as if he were expecting an attack, too. Kal didn’t know if that was because of the call or from his mentioning of this Valentine bloke, but he couldn’t help but feel a little reassured that if they were to fight something, he wouldn’t be fighting on his own.

 

~

 

The brownstone where Kal lived was in Park Slope―and before you ask, no, it was not the famous one that’s painted pink. It was just a normal, brown brownstone and, like all the others in the area, had once been residence to a single richy rich family. It was probably pretty once, what with the curved oak staircase with the intricately carved banister, the cracked marble floor of foyer, the large circular skylight set into the ceiling far above that cracked marble floor. But now it was a ghost of what it once might have been, its former grandeur long since faded like the colour of a vintage velvet purse. 

Its once spacious floors had been hacked into separate apartments, though only two were occupied―the one that Kal shared with Jocelyn, and the one occupied by the downstairs tenant, Madame Dorothea. Dorothea, a more-than-slightly eccentric African American lady, was self-proclaimed psychic who ran a tourist trap out of her apartment. She rarely came out of it at all, and since visitors were―quelle surprise―rather few and far in between, occasionally Kal would stop by and say hello, for, even though she was a total crackpot, she was actually pretty entertaining to talk to. Earlier that day when he and Ren had passed, however, she’d actually been busy, the low rumble of multiple voices coming from within, so they hadn’t stopped.

Upon catching sight of the building that Kal called home, he found himself breaking into a run. His messenger bag thumped hard against his side, an unfamiliar sensation given his affinity for avoiding swords and hip scabbards, but he managed to ignore it. His heart was pounding in his chest, and it had nothing to do with the exertion.

Okay, maybe it had a little bit to do with the exertion.

He practically skidded to a stop in front of the gate, remembering absently that he had a second person with him. Upon quickly making sure that Jace was still behind him, Kal pushed open the gate and practically jumped up the steps before throwing open the door.

The second floor windows of their apartment had been lit, which seemed like a good thing, maybe, but the foyer was pitch black―it seemed that the weak light bulb that lit the stairwell had finally given up and went passed onto the light bulb afterlife. He could barely see the outline of the staircase through the gloom because, unfortunately, he did not have super night vision as an Apollo kid. He’d have to mention that to god ol’ dad next time he saw him.

“Is it supposed to be this dark?” Jace asked in a hushed voice, startlingly close to Kal’s ear.

Kal elbowed him. “Shut up.”

Taking a tentative step into the building, Kal’s hand went to his side. He reached under his shirt and pulled  _ Solas _ from its sheath, turning it in his grip and holding it up.  _ Solas _ , like most all things made from celestial bronze, had a faint glow to it, casting a bronze-tinted light around just bright enough to see with. He heard Jace make a noise of surprise behind him but ignored it, instead focusing on the the stairs in front of him.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” said a heavily-accented voice.

Kal yelped and whirled, tightening his grip on  _ Solas _ ’s hilt at the last second so it didn’t go flying and impale something. In the dark, he hadn’t seen that the yawning gap of Madame Dorothea’s door had been filled by an armchair, the beaded curtain pushed back to reveal the lady’s rotund frame settled into it. She waved a white lace fan in front of her face―for dramatic effect, Kal gathered, given that it was about as chilly as the ninth circle of Hell in there―frowning at him from behind the gaudy thing.

“Holy Hades,” Kal breathed, pressing his hand to his racing heart. “Hello, Madame Dorothea.”

“Kalon,” Dorothea responded, inclining her head to him. Despite his constant insistence of  _ please call me Kal, ma’am, everyone does _ , she still called him by his full first name, no matter how much it bugged him. She looked at him over the tops of her bejeweled cat-eye glasses. “Your mother,” she said, “has been making a god-awful racket up there. What is she doing, moving furniture?”

Kal blinked. “Um, I’m not sure―”

Dorothea snapped her fan shut. Her gaze flicked from Kal to where Jace stood, and, almost if she could see him, her lips curled in disdain. But she didn’t acknowledge the Shadowhunter at all, and she looked back to Kal an instant later, so he wasn’t certain if maybe he’d imagined it. “And the stairwell light’s burned out!” she snapped. “Can’t your mother get that boyfriend of hers to change it?” 

Had it been literally any other time, Kal might have reminded her that Jocelyn wasn’t really his mother and Luke wasn’t her boyfriend, but he didn’t really feel like wasting that time. “Uh, will do, ma’am.” Before Madame Dorothea could ask him to get Luke to chop up another couch of hers with an ax (that had happened, and it wasn’t fun), Kal grabbed Jace by the vambrace and yanked him up the stairs after him.

“Who was that?” Jace asked under his breath.

“Madame Dorothea, the self-proclaimed psychic of Park Slope,” Kal muttered. “She’s not actually psychic, though―trust me. Son of the god of prophecy, you know.”

“Right.”

About halfway up, Kal realized that he was still pulling Jace along. He quickly released Jace’s arm, suddenly very glad that it was dark so that the Shadowhunter couldn’t see the heat that had risen to his cheeks. That became the least of his worries, however, when he reached the landing.

The door to his apartment was ever-so-slightly open, artificial light spilling out onto the landing. The paint around the handle was chipped and scuffed up, the handle itself hanging at an odd angle from its screws, which meant that someone―or  _ something _ ―had forced their way into it. His stomach dropped, and to Kal’s embarrassment, he heard himself let out a whimper. 

With shaking hands, he pushed open the door.

He winced at his eyes were assaulted―after the dimness of the hall and the foyer, the brightly lit interior of the apartment was hell of his poor corneas. It seemed that every light in the entire place was turned on. 

The sickening feeling increased when he saw the wrought-iron shelf by the door where Jocelyn always left her handbag and her keys in the ceramic bowl. They were both there, which meant that she hadn’t left of her own accord; she never would have left them there had she gone out willingly.

“What is it?” Jace peered over his shoulder, making Kal jump―momentarily, he’d forgotten that Jace was even there.

“That’s um…” Kal licked his lips, his mouth feeling dry. “That’s Jocelyn’s purse, which means that either she’s still here, or…” 

He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. He could even entertain the possibility that Jocelyn was hurt, or worse. He couldn’t lose someone, not again. Not now. He’d already lost his mother, and Eli...oh, Eli. Absently, Kal’s hand went to the scars along his forearm, touching the jagged marks there, traces of those memories that he so wished to forget.

Jace nodded. “Who’s Jocelyn?”

“My, ah, guardian.” Kal turned to look at Jace, who, surprisingly, seemed to be actually interested in the topic. “She took me in after my mother died. Come on.” He took a moment to brace himself for whatever he would see before heading into the living room. But he hadn’t prepared himself enough for the horror show he saw.

The room was a mess. Both windows had been flung open, gauzy curtains ripped from the rings and laying in tatters on the floor. The sofa cushions had been gutted and tossed about the room like some sort of gruesome art display, the bookshelves tipped over and books spilling out in a literary disaster worse than  _ Twilight _ . (Ooh, that may have been uncalled for.) But worst of all was Jocelyn’s paintings. Each had been meticulously slashed from their framed and torn to shreds. A wave of dismay washed over him, knocking him to his knees.

Kal picked up a tatter of a painting and peered at it. It had been from one of his favorites, a landscape of a vaguely European-looking valley with rolling hills and the glittering towers of a city in the distance. He could barely see the tops of one of the towers in the piece in his hands, the rest taken up by blue skies.

He turned to where Jace stood in the entry hall and forced himself to his feet. He couldn’t do anything productive if he let himself collapse now.  

“I―I can’t decide if this was cut by a knife or claws,” Kal stammered, handing the piece of canvas to Jace. “What do you think?”

Jace inspected the jagged edges and shrugged. “Hard to tell,” he replied, an apologetic note in his tone when he returned it.

Kal stuck it in his bag and straightened. He had to push past the shock, see if he could find anything that would give him an idea of what they were dealing with. “Is it just me,” he said slowly, casting his gaze about the room again, “or does something seem amiss here? I mean, what kind of robber would leave behind a wallet, or the expensive things like the TV?”

“And why would they take the time to rip up the paintings and the pillows?” Jace contributed, clearly following Kal’s line of thought. “It’s almost like…”

“They were looking for something specific?” Kal finished, meeting his gaze. “Okay, you take the kitchen. I’m going to check out the bedrooms. Take anything and I swear to the gods, you will not live to regret it.” He twisted  _ Solas _ in his grip, purposefully drawing attention to it. Kal honestly had no idea if it would even hurt Jace―celestial bronze just phased through mortals, or anything that wasn’t a monster, a minor god, or a demigod, and so the chances of it actually leaving a mark on these Shadowfuckers was slim, but there was still a possibility. Of course, Jace had no idea about any of that, and so Kal’s gesture seemed to get his point across.

Jace rolled his eyes. “Do I look like a thief?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

Kal headed down the short hall to his room. Strangely enough, it seemed to be untouched, everything in exactly the same place it had been when he’d left earlier. Fishing under his pillow, his hand found the perpetually cold hilt of Jace’s crystal dagger. Pulling it out, he left his room and headed into Jocelyn’s.

Hers, too, had been left alone. The handmade quilt that Jocelyn adored so was folded lovingly, the pillows with their embroidered, lace-edges coves resting on top like the bed had just been made up minutes ago. From the bedside table, a photo of a smiling seven-year-old boy gazed back at him, dark hair in desperate need of a cut and paint smeared over his face and clothes. There was a woman kneeling on the ground beside him, also covered in paint, but though her face hidden behind a curtain of her black hair, it was easy to tell that she was laughing.

A twinge went through Kal’s heart. Momentarily forgetting where he was, he picked up the photo, fingers trailing over the woman’s form.  _ Mom. _ He’d never seen the photo before, and certainly not on Jocelyn’s bedside table with her photos of her and Luke, of her and Kal. Jocelyn wasn’t even in this photo―she was behind the camera.

Before he could think better of it, Kal slid the photograph, frame and all, into his bag. Then he glanced at the picture of Jocelyn and Luke, what looked like somewhere in Coney Island in the background. They looked so happy…

_ I’ll find you, _ Kal vowed silently.  _ If it’s the last thing I do, I will find you. _

THUNK.

Kal jumped, nearly dropping the dagger in his hand. He turned toward the door slowly. There was a chilling sound cutting through the silence of the apartment―something slithering, pulling itself along the wooden floor, getting closer and closer. He held out  _ Solas _ , certain that it was a dracaena dragging its double serpent tails that it had instead of legs, coming to kill him in some sort of sick revenge act for what he did three years ago. Hell, maybe it was the same one that he sliced in half―wouldn’t that be just his luck? Wouldn’t it just be fitting to die at the hands of the same creature that had killed his dear, sweet Eli?

And then he saw it.

No, it wasn’t a dracaena, but Kal wasn’t exactly relieved. The creature coiled in the bottom of the doorway looked something like a monsterous, mutated alligator―a monsterous, mutated alligator with an excessive amount of beady black eyes like a spider, a multitude of stubby little legs, and the large, curved tail of a scorpion.

“Oh, dear,” Kal said to it, shaking his head. “We all told Serqet and Sobek to avoid hitting the liquor together. They should have listened, because you are one ugly kid.”

The thing made a noise like a snarl and tensed to pounce at him, but Kal was ready for it. When it leapt at him, he ducked out of the way, rolling into a crouching position with both daggers drawn, celestial bronze in one hand, mysterious diamond-like crystal in the other. The thing struck the ground where he’d been just moments before and skidded, claws leaving deep gouges in the floor as it scrabbled to stop itself.

Kal  _ tsk _ ed at it. “Aw, come on, man! That’s the original hardwood flooring, and you ruined it!”

It growled at him.

Grinning, Kal dashed out of the room and into the hallway. He heard the creature slam into the wall behind him, barely missing him as he ran away, but he didn’t look back. 

Kal leapt onto the ruined carcass of the couch to wait for the creature as it lumbered down the hall. It didn’t look like anything he’d ever faced before, meaning that it was probably one of the Shadowfuckers’ monsters rather a Greek one, so Kal sheathed  _ Solas _ and switched the crystal dagger to his right hand. Whatever the thing was, it wasn’t very fast. It kept opening its jaw wide and flicking its disgusting black tongue at him, making weird noises like some sort of alien language.

And then he realized that it was actually  _ speaking _ . As in, it was speaking  _ English _ .

“ _ Boy,” _ it hissed in its slithery Parseltongue.  _ “Flesh. Blood. To eat, oh, to eat.” _

“Actually, buddy, I think the line is “ _ to sleep―perchance to dream! _ ” but, good try.” Kal turned to the kitchen. “Yo, Jace! Beastie at twelve o’clock, could use your assistance!”

The kitchen door burst open, and there stood Jace in a fighting stance, a silver tube like the handle of the crystal dagger in his hand, and covered in what looked like Tobasco sauce. His gaze went from Kal, perched atop the frame of the sofa, to the creature in the hall.

Kal looked at him. “‘Bout time, man. Let me guess, this thing’s one of yours?”

“You could say that.” Jace flipped the silver tube over in his hands and shouted,  _ “Ariel!” _ which Kal was pretty sure had nothing to do with  _ The Little Mermaid. _ There was a great flare of light, and the tube sprouted a crystal blade like the one that Kal was currently holding.

Reaffirmed that the crystal dagger would, in fact kill the thing, Kal turned back to the monster. It seemed to almost be studying them, beady little black eyes fixed on the glow of their blades. 

_ “Shadowhunters,” _ it hissed, which kind of impressed Kal given that it seemed like a fairly large word for this thing’s vocabulary to possess.  _ “Valentine said nothing of Shadowhunter here _ ―”

It might have said something else, but there was a rushing in Kal’s ears. Valentine, Valentine, Valentine. This name was really starting to piss him off, and not in the bitter single on Valentine’s Day way. Whoever this asshole was obviously had something to do with whatever happened to Jocelyn, even though he was supposed to be dead―but “supposed to be dead” held no merit to Kal. He knew a girl who had died in the forties and had been brought back to life. He had once been friends with a guy who’d been possessed by Kronos and had supposedly  _ died _ like, four times before he  _ actually  _ died.

Whoever this Valentine was, he was behind this. He was the culprit behind Jocelyn’s disappearance. He was the one who sent this monstrous thing that was now trying to kill Kal. Valentine was the tie in all of this.

The creature lunged for Kal, but flipped himself over the side of the couch. He scrambled to his feet, but slipped on a clump of stuffing that had presumably spilled from one of the torn pillows and went down hard, narrowly avoiding smacking his head against the tiled hearth of the fireplace. He heard Jace shouting something at him, but his attention was elsewhere; the monster, seeing Kal’s moment of weakness, had tackled him to the ground before he could crawl away.

“Dude, you seriously need to  _ diet _ ,” Kal groaned, turning his face away and doing his best to breath through his mouth. The thing  _ stank, _ a putrid, acrid smell that burned his nose hairs and made him think of what a rotting body might smell like. “And shower, he added.

Having Serqet and Sobek’s love child on top of him seriously restricted him movements, but Kal had somehow managed to keep his grip on the crystal dagger. He strained to work his arm out enough  to hit the damned thing with it, but it was hard to focus―his other arm was pinned between his body and the thing entirely, and the thing was so heavy that he thought his ribs might collapse. But he didn’t give up.

There! His arm was free! He swung up as hard as he could just as the creature reared back, mouth open wide. He, somehow, caught it in the roof of the mouth. Acidic drool seared his hand and wrist, but he held on tight.

The thing jerked away from him, freeing him from its weight and allowing him to get away. The tip of the dagger, slick with black blood, protruded from the top of its flat snout. It started for him again, but collapsed before taking more than a step and smacked to the ground. It began to spaz like it had been electrocuted, oil-like fluid seeping out from between its jaws.

Another glowing blade slashed through the creature, severing its head from its body. Kal looked up at Jace, who was standing over the thing. Jace wiped at his face, smearing the splatter of black ichor across his cheek, before meeting Kal’s gaze. His eyes seemed less like amber now, more like the last golden rays of the dying sun―blazing and fierce and just a little bit wild.

“Are you okay?” Jace asked.

Slowly, Kal nodded. “A-as okay as I possibly can be, I suppose,” he replied shakily. He stared at the creature’s form in silence, watching as it imploded and vanished like the one from the Pandemonium. There was a strange sort of blaring noise in the air―something that he realized after a moment was the wailing of police sirens coming from outside. Kal forced himself to look away from the ichor stain and back to Jace.

“We should leave,” Jace said, clearly hearing the sirens too.

“That is the first smart thing I’ve ever heard you say, Goldilocks.” Kal picked up his bag from where he must have dropped it earlier―he didn’t remember it leaving its place slung over his arm, but it hd somehow made its way to hide under the couch during the fight―and shouldered it, wincing at the weight on his twisted shoulder.

They made their way out of the apartment. As they took to the stairs together, Kal was hit by a sudden wave of dizziness. He stumbled, flinging his arm out to catch the railing, but there was no need; Jace was already there, strong hands gripping Kal’s arms to steady him. “Whoa, are you sure that you’re okay?” Jace said in his ear.

A sharp, sarcastic retort was quick to rise to Kal’s tongue, but it stopped there like a glass wall had cut off the inside of his mouth from the outside world. He tried to turn, tried to stand, tried to do anything, but it was like his motor skills had been completely cut off. He slid down, the only thing keeping him from falling all the way down the stairs were Jace’s arms, and spots clouded his eyes. He didn’t feel pain, he didn’t feel anything―his body was cotton. Kal was a stuffed doll that was quickly losing consciousness, and the last thing he saw before that sweet, sweet darkness engulfed him was Jace’s golden eyes, sparkling like stars in the velvety black of Kal’s night sky.

 

~

 

Years of Shadowhunter training was the only thing that allowed Jace to keep Kal from falling entirely, but only barely. If he hadn’t been holding on to Kal anyway, he might have not been paying attention, might not have been able to catch him in time.

Cursing under his breath, Jace steadied Kal’s limp form on the stairs, quickly searching to find the cause of Kal’s collapse. He was pale and clammy―why didn’t Jace see that before? He should have stopped the moment they’d killed the Ravener and made sure that Kal was alright, and not just take the boy’s word for it. How could he be so foolish?

The inside of Kal’s right arm, the one he’d stabbed the Ravener with, was torn near the wrist―not deep enough to sever the artery, thank the Angel, but bleeding out was the least of his worries. One of the Ravener’s serrated, shark-like teeth had embedded itself in Kal’s skin, which must have happened when he’d stabbed the thing in the mouth. Why didn’t he say anything about it? A Ravener’s bite was poisonous!

_ Which he didn’t know, _ said a small voice in the back of Jace’s mind.  _ How could he? He isn’t a Shadowhunter. _ He shoved it away, realizing that he had much worse things to worry about. Like how he was supposed to get Kal back to the Institute where he could be properly treated―and questioned. Would Kal even  _ make _ it back? Jace wasn’t sure.

There only seemed to be one thing that he could do. It was seriously, ridiculously stupid, but, well…he didn’t have much of a choice. Kal would probably die anyway. Jace didn’t have much to lose, it seemed.

Pulling out his stele, Jace set it to Kal’s skin and began to draw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Yes, there actually is a brownstone in Park Slope that's painted pink. I discovered it in my search for reference pictures (because I don't live in New York or any place that's ever had brownstones, I had no idea what they looked like―or what they were, really―until I Googled it. Small town girl, right here.)
> 
> -Serqet is an Egyptian goddess who is often associated with and depicted as having scorpion-like features. Sobek is an Egyptian god associated with the Nile River and the crocodiles that inhabit it. (They were both in the Kane Chronicles, if I remember correctly.)
> 
> -"To sleep―perchance to dream" is a quote from Hamlet. More specifically, from his infamous soliloquy―you know, the "To be, or not to be, that is the question" one? Yeah, that one. 
> 
> -Ariel is the name of an angel of protection, also known as the "Lion of God."
> 
> -Fun fact: the reason that I occasionally refer to the seraph blades (the crystal-bladed daggers) as having diamond-like blades is because that they're canonically made of a material called "adamas" which is actually the Greek word that we get the word "diamond" from. Adamas means "unconquerable" and "indestructible." The more you know!


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry about the wait! The past couple months have been so crazy that I haven't had much time to work on my fanfics, and I've just been going through a lot. But I'm back now! The chapter's kind of short, but I promise that I'm working on the next one. With any luck, it should be up in the next couple days. :)
> 
> (*whispers* Please forgive me)

#  **CHAPTER FOUR**

 

“Do you think he’ll ever wake up? It’s been three days already.”

“You have to give him time. Demon poison is strong stuff, and he’s a mundane. He doesn’t have runes to keep him strong like we do.”

“Mundanes die awfully easily, don’t they?”

“Isabelle, you know it’s bad luck to talk about death in a sick room.”

 

~

 

Three days. It had been three days. Why had it been three days? Had Kal been injured at camp? Who were those voices? They sounded vaguely familiar, but they didn’t belong to any of his siblings who were assigned to the med wing. And why couldn’t he open his eyes? He tried, but it was if they’d been superglued shut―or as if they didn’t exist at all. 

 

~

 

“I told you it was the same boy.”

“I know. Scrawny thing, isn’t he? Jace said he killed a Ravener.”

“He doesn’t look like he could take on a Ravener.”

“Didn’t look like he could kill the eidolon, either, but we all saw that. And anyway, no one looks their best with demon poison in their veins. Is Hodge going to call in the brothers?”

“Ugh, I hope not. They give me the creeps. Anyone who mutilates themselves like that―”

“ _ We _ mutilate ourselves.”

“I know, Alec, but when we do it, it isn’t permanent. And it doesn’t always hurt…”

“If you’re old enough. Speaking of which, where’s Jace? Didn’t he save the mundie? I would’ve thought that he’d take some interest in his recovery.”

“Hodge says that Jace hasn’t visited since he brought him in. I guess he doesn’t care.”

“Sometimes I wonder if he cares about anything at all…”

 

~

 

Kal was floating, weightless, suspended in an endless nothingness like the world had been sucked back into Chaos. Occasionally, he was hit with visions that swam up out of the inky darkness like monsters from that  _ Bendy and the Ink Machine  _ game, as realistic and vivid as any of the dreams he’d ever had as a demigod and just as nonsensical. He saw Ren standing in the doorway of his apartment, eyes going wide and glassy as she took in the ruin. Saw his mother standing on the walkway on Brooklyn Bridge, smiling at him before turning and dissolving into a clump of shiny black feathers. Saw her grave, and the snow-white raven sitting atop it, its intelligent dark eyes boring straight into his soul. Saw the endless stretch of the night sky studded with diamond stars, slashed through by the fiery tail of a falling star as it shot through space. Saw an angel rising from a lake, the sword in its hand ablaze and the goblet in its other sloshing with a glowing golden liquid that looked disturbingly like the ichor of the gods. The angel opened its eyes, and from them burst a torrent of blinding light. 

Everything went white.

 

~

 

“Look! He moved!”

“I guess he’s still alive, after all.” The speaker sighed. “I’ll go get Hodge.”

 

~

 

Kal’s eyes shot open, and for a moment, he thought for sure that he was dead. All he saw was just a blank whiteness, and his ears rang with that same sort of tone one hears in a movie after an explosion knocks the main character to the ground. 

But his vision cleared, and he found himself staring at a group of creepy little Valentine’s Day babies. You know, the ones that everyone call cherubs or cupids but actually aren’t. Given that cherubs were actually described in the Bible as four-faced monstrosities covered in eyeballs, and Cupid, or Eros, is actually a huge dickbag (coming from secondhand experience―Kal had heard about what happened when Nico di Angelo and Jason Grace had encountered the fuckbag of a god), he had no idea where the confusion came from. He knew the actual names for those little babies, but for the life of him, couldn’t think of what it was.

It was about this time that he realized that the little baby-things were painted on the arched ceiling of the room he was currently in, which meant that either the med wing got a truly horrible makeover or he wasn’t at camp at all. Kal stretched back in his mind, grappling for the threads of his memories in hopes that tying them would recreate a discernible picture of what the fuck had happened.

_ Laughter, a nose full of coffee-scented ice… _

Okay, so he’d gone with Ren to meet up with the band at Java Jones. That much he remembered clearly. But something had come up. He remembered going home, remembered grabbing the crystal dagger from under his pillow, but why? What did he do with it?

_ Pain flaring in his wrist, acidic drool dripping onto his skin. He was screaming, but it was so far away, like it was another person. And the dagger…  _

_ The hilt was in his hand, the blade stabbed through the skull of the monster pinning him to the ground. _

Everything came back to him in a tidal wave of horror. Jace showing up at Java Jones, Jocelyn’s frantic call, the destroyed apartment, the monster, passing out in Jace’s arms― _ everything. _ Kal couldn’t even feel embarrassed about the last part, he was so distracted by the mess of it. 

The last thing he remembered was going down the stairs and feeling dizzy. Jace’s arms had gone around him, steadied him, and then…nothing. And now he was here.

But where was here?

Kal shot into a sitting position―which was a mistake. A shooting pain flared in his right arm, which buckled under him and sent him crashing back onto the mattress. The ringing in his ears, which had almost subsided, came back with the fury of, well, a Fury. He groaned. Ow, ow, ow. Okay, that had been a bad idea. 

It took a few minutes for him to recover from that little bit of morosis, and a few more to actually attempt sitting up again. He may have been a healer, but Kal was really not good with pain. He was very bad with it, actually. Like, really bad. His pain tolerance was as nonexistent as the fucks he had left. But he made it up, putting most of his weight on his left arm, and got a better look at where he was.

The room looked like an infirmary, with rows of iron-framed beds like the one he was laying in. The floor was a dark wood, the walls the same periwinkle blue that made up the sky behind those freaky little babies on the ceiling. There was a large oak door to his far right, currently closed, and the wall across from him and two isles of beds over was almost entirely made up of arched, gothic cathedral-style windows. And sitting on the bed over, silent and stoic and heart-attack-inducing when he finally noticed her, was Isabelle.

“So you’re finally awake,” Isabelle said, oblivious to the fact that she’d scared the chimera crap out of Kal. “Hodge will be pleased. We all thought you’d probably die in your sleep.”

Ah, Isabelle. Just as wonderful and sweet as he remembered her, despite the change of costume. Braided hair and a pair of jeans couldn’t fool him into mistaking her, no siree! Gods, how was it that she could make a pair of jeans and blue tank top, no matter how tight it was, look like high-end fashion?  _ Please let her not be another Drew...please let her not be another Drew… _

“Takes a lot more than that to kill little ol’ me,” he responded, tone as dry as his throat. He glanced about. “So this is the Institute, you’re Isabelle of the golden whip, and I’m Kal. Introductions over. Where’s my bag?”

“What?”

“My  _ bag _ ,” Kal repeated slowly, as if to a child. “The messenger bag I had with me the last time I was conscious? Not that you would probably know that, given that you weren’t there, but I presume that it was with me when Goldilocks showed up with my unconscious body―or however that played out, I wouldn’t know, I was  _ unconscious _ .”

With a heavy sigh, Isabelle slid from the bed she was perched on and walked over to his. She bent down near the end and picked something up, dropping it unceremoniously onto where his knees were under the thin cotton blanket. His bag. “There. Happy?”

“Indubitably.” Kal pulled his bag onto his lap and began to dig through it. After a minute or two of searching, he found what he was looking for in the inside pocket. They were a bit squashed, admittedly, but they’d be fine. “Ah!” Kal held up the plastic baggie like it was the Holy Grail, ignoring the strange look he received from Isabelle. Sure, they didn’t look like anything more than mushed blondies, or maybe lemon bars, but she wasn’t a demigod. Kal took out a lopsided ambrosia square and popped it into his mouth, savoring the flavour as it melted over his tongue.

Pumpkin pie, topped with  a big dollop of whip cream. Thanksgiving when he was seven years old, the last day he ever had with his mom.

He swallowed the lump in his throat that had nothing to do with the half-chewed ambrosia square that went with it. Any injuries that he’d sustained during the fight with that croc monster would probably be too extreme for the ambrosia to heal, but at least it would probably take care of the headache and the fatigue. That funny, tingly warmth that seemed to be a package deal with healing magic spread through his body, and, almost immediately, he felt better.

When Kal opened his eyes again, Isabelle was staring at him, eyebrows raised. “Ambrosia,” he told her, answering her unasked question. “Food of the gods, healer of minor demigod injuries.” He zipped the sandwich-sized back back up and returned it to the pocket of his messenger bag.

“Demigod?” Isabelle repeated, more to herself than to him.  “Jace said something about that when he brought you here. He also said that you killed the Ravener all on your own.” This time, when she regarded him, the ice in her coal-black eyes had melted into something almost resembling respect.

Kal wasn’t usually one to toot his own horn, but it was hard to not feel a little bit smug at seeing Isabelle look at him like that―as if he might be something more than just a silly little mundie like he might be something to be revered. “Well, I did stab it in the face, but Jace was the one who chopped its head off,” he admitted. “If what I did didn’t kill it, then I think decapitation probably did.”

As quickly as it appeared, the thinly-veiled awed look vanished from Isabelle’s face. Kal tried not to be hurt by that. “Do you know how hard it is to get demon ichor out of the carpet?” she asked flippantly. “Oh, Hodge was  _ furious _ when he saw the mess you two left. If Jace had done anything like that when my parents were here, he would have been grounded for sure.”

Kal stifled a snort. The thought of sarcastic, badass Jace being sentenced to something as normal as a  _ grounding _ was actually really funny, but he wasn’t sure if that was because it actually was funny or if he was just seriously strung out at this point. What would that grounding even be like?  _ No demon hunting for a month, young man. I’m taking away your swords! _

Then, on a more sober note, Kal noticed her choice of words. If  _ her _ parents had been there. Jace wasn’t related to her―anyone who had an eye for bone structure and a general grasp of genetics could tell that much. He was living with her, and it seemed that whoever his parents were, they were out of the picture. Dead, or estranged?

Or was Kal just reading too much into this?

Clearing his throat and clearing his mind, Kal said, “Hodge? Jace’s tutor...right?”

“Hodge tutors us all,” Isabelle responded.  _ So there’s more of them. The dark-haired boy from the Pandemonium Club, at least, maybe more.  _ “The bathroom’s through that door there. There’s some clothes in there for you to change into.”

With that sudden and horrid clarity that one often experiences upon realizing that they forgot their homework at home and would get detention for it, or upon discovering that they left the keys in the car and it had been stolen, Kal realized that he’d had this entire interaction in his underwear. He didn’t know what was more fabulously humiliating―that he’d been talking to Isabelle in nothing but his tighty whities, or the thought that someone had undressed him while he was unconscious. 

Kal pulled the blanket up around himself. “Erm, what happened to _m_ y clothes?”

“They were covered in Ravener poison and blood. Jace burned them.”

“Of course he did,” Kal muttered, trying not to be grumpy. He’d liked those jeans. They were comfy, and warm, and easy to move around in. Gods damn it.

“I should go tell the others you’re awake. They’ve been waiting for you to open your eyes for three days. And you…” Isabelle narrowed her eyes at him. “You should get dressed. And clean up a little. You smell.”

She swished away, vanishing out the door without another word. The moment the door shut with that heavy thud that large wooden doors always seemed to make, Kal let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and tossed back the blanket. He swung his feet over the side, flinching a little as his feet hit the cold flagstones.

Well, he could stand on his own. That was a good sign. And he could still move his hand despite the bandages that swathed the length of his forearm, which was double good. His wrist felt stiff, but for the most part, he seemed to be in fairly good shape.

Glancing around in case someone was going to jump out and laugh at his  _ Spiderman _ boxes, Kal grabbed his bag and headed into the bathroom.

 

~

 

Kal didn’t know whose clothes had been left for him, but he felt like Miranda had dragged him over to the emo side. The sweater was a dark wine colour and was long enough that the sleeves fell past his hands, and the black jeans bunched around his ankles because they were a good couple inches too long for him. He figured that he was showing off more collarbone than was expressly polite, but honestly, he didn’t care.

He took off the bandages around his forearm to check on his wound, deciding that if it still needed to be wrapped, he had bandages in his bag. To his surprise, all he found was a fading red mark on the inside of his wrist, almost like he’d accidentally touched the side of a hot pan on the stove. Kal remembered the searing pain as that beast’s drool, no doubt poisonous, had dripped on his wrist. And yet, there was no sign of it.

Just as he was about to drop his arm, something he hadn’t really noticed before caught his eye. The light sparked off something just above the burn, and on closer inspection, he realized that it was a pale, thin scar, so faded that it almost blended in to the pallor of his skin. It had an odd sort of pattern to it, a swirling mark that was reminiscent to the ones he’d seen on Jace in Java Jones.

Frowning, Kal shook his head. He’d worry about what that mark meant later. Right now, he needed to get his shoes. His converse were waiting for him beside his infirmary bed, where his bag had been left. As he went to slide his feet into them, he realized that something had been tucked into his left shoe―his dagger sheath,  _ Solas _ clasped inside.

He attached the sheath to the back of his borrowed pants and finished putting on his shoes. Then, slinging his bag over his shoulder, Kal headed for the infirmary door. Time to find these Shadowfuckers and get some answers.

 

~

 

There was a long corridor waited for him outside, which honestly looked kind of like something out of a horror game. It was lit only by blown-glass lamps that hung at intervals along the walls, which didn’t spread much light anyway. The wallpaper was roughly the same colour as his new sweater and looked Victorian, but it was faded and and everything was a little dusty, like someone couldn’t be bothered to take a duster through there every once in a while. The air itself smelled musty and old, which in itself wasn’t exactly the most unpleasant smell, but it was odd nonetheless. And to Kal, who was used to wide, open strawberry fields and nature and all that jazz around this time of year, it felt kind of…suffocating. 

_ So this is the Institute…?  _ Kal wondered as he walked down the hall, looking around with mild interest. The place was actually really kind of awesome, which made him feel more wary than anything. If being a demigod had taught him anything, it was that most places, especially the cool or seemingly safe ones, couldn’t be trusted.

He kept his arms wrapped around himself as he continued on, more to keep himself from reaching out and opening one of the many doors that lined the hall. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but he had no intentions of joining said cat in the Underworld anytime soon. 

After a long trek without seeing another soul, Kal eventually heard a faint musical noise in the distance and headed for it, figuring that it was his best shot at finding another person. He realized that it was the sound of a piano not a few moments later, a piano played by someone incredibly skilled. His steps slowed as he reached the open doorway that the noise was coming from, half expecting to see his father waiting for him―but no, it was another slightly obnoxious, less awesome blonde seated at the piano.

The room beyond this open doorway appeared to be some sort of music room. Rows of empty chairs took up the back half of the room, facing the doorway. A cluster of dusty instruments sat on stands along the wall opposite of the chairs, and a collection of stands had been shoved in a corner. What looked like a harp had been covered with a sheet. There was a large window almost directly across from the doorway, the heavy velvet drapes yanked back to pool on a shining grand piano―and, of course, the young man playing it.

Jace was seated on the piano bench, head bowed to the instrument and fingers dancing over the keys with such grace that Kal’s breath caught. The Shadowhunter boy was barefoot, dressed only in a pair of dark jeans an a grey t-shirt, revealing that his muscled arms were bare of marks today. His blonde hair looked messier than usual, as though he’d just woken up, but it infuriatingly made him no less attractive.

That was  _ so _ unfair. Kal’s father may have been the god of music, but his fingers were too short and clumsy on their own to be very good at piano, and he would know. He tried. For three years.

“Don’t suppose you take suggestions?” Kal drawled, leaning against the doorway.

Jace swivelled around, blinking into the shadows. Kal was pleased to see that Jace had looked a little startled before smoothing the emotion away. “Ah, our very own Sleeping Beauty,” Jace said, the tension in his shoulders relaxing. “Who finally kissed you awake?”

“Nobody. I woke up on my own.”

“Was anybody with you?” Jace got to his feet, pushing the bench back under the piano with his knees. He seemed to be purposefully avoiding Kal’s gaze, though Kal wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe it was because Jace had realized that he’d been a dick and apparently hadn’t visited the unconscious boy he’d dragged home with him in the three days he’d been there.

“The ever-lovely Isabelle,” Kal responded, drumming his fingers on his arm. “She left to go announce my awakening, or something. I think she might have said something about staying there, but―hey, I’m ADHD. Sitting around waiting isn’t really really a skill of mine.”

“I should have warned her of your habit of not doing what you’re told.” Jace squinted at him suddenly, tilting his head. “Are those Alec’s clothes you’re wearing? They look…interesting on you.”

Suddenly self-conscious, Kal fidgeted with the cuffs of his sleeves. He didn’t think he wanted to know what Jace mean by “ _ interesting” _ . “Well, I’m not the one who  _ burned  _ my clothes,” he retorted.

Jace’s lips twitched. “It was purely precautionary,” he responded, sliding the piano cover closed. “Come on, I’ll take you to Hodge.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bendy and the Ink Machine- an Indie horror game where you play as an ex-animator in an animation studio that's been taken over by dark energies and ink demons.
> 
> "Drew" is a character who I believe is first mentioned in the first Heroes of Olympus series, a rather annoying and bitchy daughter of Aphrodite.


	5. Chapter Five

#  **CHAPTER FIVE**

 

The Institute was quite possibly the largest building that Kal had ever found himself wandering through, and that was saying something, given that he’d seen Olympus itself. It was huge and ancient and cavernous, and he was more than certain that if Jace had not been there to lead him, Kal most definitely would have gotten lost.

They passed through an area that seemed to house countless bedrooms, each indistinguishable from the last. They were all very plain, with white-sheeted beds and wooden nightstands and empty wardrobes that looked like at any moment the Pevensie children were going to come tumbling out. The archways were carved with many different figures, quite a few of them seeming to sport feathered wings, and Kal noticed that there was a recurring symbol in the murals on the wall: an angel rising from a lake holding a sword and a cup.

“Lot of bedrooms for a research institute,” Kal remarked. “You guys double as a bed and breakfast during the holidays, or…?”

Jace made a sound like a snort. “This is the residential wing. We’re pledged to offer safety and lodging to any Shadowhunter who requests it. We can house up to two hundred people here, but I don’t think we’ve ever had to. People usually come and go. Nobody stays very long. Usually, it’s just us―Alec, Isabelle, Max, their parents. Me and Hodge.”

“Max?”

“You’ve met the lovely Isabelle? Alec is her older brother. Max is the youngest, but he’s overseas with his parents.”

“Fighting demons?”

“No,” Jace responded. “You can think of them as―as, well, foreign diplomats, and this as an embassy, of sorts. As of right now, they’re in the Shadowhunter home country, working out some very…delicate peace negotiations. Since Max is so young, they decided to take him with them.”

“How old is he?” Kal asked before Jace’s words really sank in. “Wait―did you say Shadowhunter _home country?_ ”

The blonde nodded. “It’s called Idris.”

Kal blinked. “Like the actor from _The Dark Tower?”_

“No.”

“So why haven’t I heard of this country of yours? No, wait, let me guess. Protective wardings that keep mortals from realizing that it’s there?” At Jace’s surprised glance, Kal grinned. “We have something similar at Camp. No mortals or monsters can get in unless allowed by someone inside.”

“Camp?” Jace asked curiously.

“Camp Half-Blood,” Kal told him. “It’s a safe place for demigods―one of the only safe places. Whenever a demigod is discovered by the various scouts around the country, they’re brought to camp so that they can be taught how to defend themselves in the outside world. Most kids go back to the mortal world for the school year, but some of us don’t have homes to go to or are too powerful to be left on their own. The more powerful a demigod, the more monsters they attract,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “It’s located on Long Island, near Montauk, just for context. Where’s Idris?”

“Between Germany and France.”

“But there isn’t anything betwe― _ohhh_.”

Jace smirked. “Precisely. If a mundane were to attempt to enter Idris, they’d simply find themselves transported from one border to the next. They’d never know what happened, so naturally, it wouldn’t be on any of their maps.”

“That…makes sense,” Kal said slowly, processing it. Dammit. These Shadow-runners were making it harder and harder for him to consider demigods superior. _They have their own country?! Come on!_ “Have you been to Idris?”

The Shadowhunter glanced at him, all humor fleeing his expression. “I grew up there,” he said in a neutral tone, but there was a sort of tightness to his words that Kal recognized instantly as a signifier of a touchy subject. “Most of us do. There are, of course, Shadowhunters all over the world, taking care of demonic activity in just about every country. But to a Shadowhunter, Idris is always “home.””

“Kind of like Greece,” Kal offered. “Except…not really, because the gods have relocated and demigods aren’t really supposed to go to Greece because of dangerous old powers, and…Nevermind, forget I said anything.”

With a confused sort of stare that made Kal certain that Jace was finally beginning to think he was off his rocker (too little, too late, asshole), he went on. “We’re sent where we’re needed. There are a few, like Alec and Isabelle, who grow up away from home country because that’s where their parents are. With all the resources of the Institute here, and Hodge’s training―” Jace cut himself off abruptly, stopping in the hall. “This is the library.

The had reached an arch-shaped set of wooden doors, flanked on either side by the carvings of―surprise, surprise―two angels with their wings outstretched. A long-haired blue persian cat lay at the feet of the angel to the left, curled up like it was sleeping. It looked up as they approached, lifting its head and opening its yellow-green eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the two weren’t worth its precious cat time, it went back to sleeping.

“Ugh, you have a cat?” Kal took a wary step back. “Pretentious little bastards.” Then, glancing at Jace, he shrugged. “Nevermind, I see why you two would get along. You _look_ like a cat person.”

Jace just shook his head. “Hey, Church,” he said to the cat, bending down to scratch behind the beast’s ears.

“So, question: Alec and Isabelle are the only people your age that you spend time with? My gods, no wonder you’ve gone and made friends with that devilish fiend.” Kal made a face at the cat, who hissed at him in response.

“I have everything I need,” Jace responded, straightening back up.

He pushed open the library doors and stepped through. With some quick steps to avoid the cat’s claws, Kal followed him inside.

 

~

 

The library was a large, circular room with a roof that tapered to a point far above their heads, like the Shadowhunters had taken Rapunzel’s tower and put in bookshelves. The shelves themselves ran along the walls, stretching to the start of the ceiling so that one had to climb a ladder to reach those at the top. Numerous ladders had been placed about on tracks so that one could move them along the shelves with ease, like the one in the library from the very beginning of the animated Disney _Beauty and the Beast_ movie. Kal tried to imagine Jace gliding along one of those and singing, and had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.

They descended down a set of steps onto a dark marble floor that, after a moment, Kal realized was set with stones in some sort of swirling symbol. He figured that it was some obscure Shadowhunter mark that wouldn’t make any sense to him, but he thought that he’d have to climb to the top of one of those ladders to see the full image and he wasn’t incredibly fond of heights. There were a couple of tables placed in rows, each with their own little desk lamp and a stack of open books like someone had gotten up in the middle of studying and had walked away. The far wall had a great window like that of a gothic cathedral, and standing before it was a seven-foot tall statue of that same angel with the sword and the cup. For some reason, the angel had a Roman helmet with a tall stone plume, while the sword in his hand looked more like an English longsword with a winged hilt.

And then there were the books themselves, which looked like nothing Kal had ever seen in person. They were ancient and heavy-looking, huge volumes bound in leather and velvet (and one or two that looked alarmingly like human skin?), and most of them were locked away behind literal iron cages over the shelves. Some of them looked old enough to have been in the Library of Alexandria before it burned down.

Kal swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. _Eli would have loved this place._

“Ah, you must be Kal,” came a voice, making Kal jump.

In the shadows of an alcove rested a large wooden desk that were carved to look as though two angels were hoisting it upon their backs. Their looks of anguish made him uneasy, but he couldn’t deny that it was beautiful craftsmanship. Behind the desk sat an older-looking man with grey-streaked dark hair and an aquiline nose. Kal couldn’t see his face very well, but he thought he saw the flash of a pair of glasses on the man’s face. “Jace didn’t tell me that you were a book lover,” said the man.

Behind Kal, Jace let out a chuckle. When Kal turned to look at him, the blonde was standing there with his hands in his pockets, that infuriating little grin back on his face. “We’ve had little time to talk about our literary habits during our short acquaintance, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, fighting for your life against monsters isn’t exactly the best time for a book club meeting,” Kal concurred. “How did you know that I like to read?” he asked the man.

It wasn’t something that he broadcasted, but Kal actually did enjoy reading upon occasion. He read a lot of fantasy, but also liked checking out the old Greek myths so that he could be prepared when he met them in real life.

“The look on your face when you walked in,” replied the man. He stood and came around the the front of the desk, entering the light. “Somehow, I doubt that you were that impressed by _me._ ”

The man wasn’t as old as Kal had initially thought, maybe his mid-forties. He was tall and thin, with weary dark eyes and a jagged scar cutting across his cheek, which made Kal immediately think of Luke Castellan, the Hermes camper-turned-evil who had helped start the second Titan war. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, given that Luke was someone that Kal had once trusted, and that without him starting that stupid war, Eli might still be alive.

Perched on the man’s shoulder was a shiny bird with feathers like an oil slick that Kal recognized immediately as a raven. He recalled a myth connecting his father, Apollo, to ravens, but couldn’t remember what it entailed. “You have a raven on your shoulder,” Kal said, quite intelligently.

“This is Hugo,” said the man, stroking the bird’s feathers. “He _is_ a raven, and as such, he knows many things. I am Hodge Starkweather, a professor of history, and as such, I do not know nearly enough.”

Kal laughed a little despite himself, deciding that he quite liked Jace’s tutor already. “Kal Heiler,” the demigod said, shaking the man’s outstretched hand. Usually, he wouldn’t give his surname to a stranger―names have power, you know―but the way Hodge had given his made him feel like it was required, or something.

“Honoured to make your acquaintance,” said Hodge with a faint smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes. “I’d be honoured to make the acquaintance of anyone who could kill a Ravener with his bare hands.”

“Actually, it wasn’t my bare hands,” Kal said quickly, feeling his cheeks heat up. He was never a camper who saw much action, so being congratulated on killing a monster, or a demon, or whatever that thing had been, felt…foreign. “And the damned thing near killed me before I got to it. Luckily I’d held onto that funny dagger Jace had used at the Pandemonium, because I have a feeling that Celestial bronze wouldn’t have hurt it.”

Hodge raised a brow. “And the Eidolon in Pandemonium?”

“I’ve trained with throwing knives,” Kal mumbled, a little embarrassed. He felt like he was tooting his own horn a little bit, and he didn’t like it. “My, uh, my weapon knocked it down but didn’t seem to kill it, so I took the blade Jace had dropped in his fight with it and stabbed it. I accidentally held onto it afterwards, and…that’s how I got the weapon to kill that thing in my apartment.”

“You could have let Jace deal with the Eidolon alone. Why didn’t you?”

“Well…” Kal hesitated. “I thought that, well, I thought that he was going to get killed. I thought the, uh, Eidolon was one of my monsters―I mean, a _Greek_ monster―and that the weapons they had wouldn’t work against it. Obviously, I was wrong, but, uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “It worked out well, I suppose.”

“Fortunately, it did.” Hodge tilted his head and studied Kal, an expression much like the one Jace had made in the dying light of the sun at Java Jones. Seriously, was that the Shadowhunter Blue Steel™, or what? “What are these Greek monsters that you speak of?”

Before Kal could even think about how to explain, a sharp laugh cut through his thoughts. It belonged to a lanky, dark-haired boy sprawled in an overstuffed red armchair in over by the statue of the angel, one that had been so silent since Kal had arrived that the demigod hadn’t even realized he was there. Alec, Kal recalled from the night at Pandemonium. “I can’t believe you buy that story, Hodge,” said the one called Alec, a clear note of disdain in his tone.

In the light of day, Alec wasn’t nearly as intimidating as he had been that night at the Pandemonium. He looked much like his sister, with the same straight, jet black hair, the same pale, smooth complexion, the same thin face that was all angles. His lashes were long and dark, his eyes a deep bottle-glass blue that would have been pretty had they not been glaring at Kal with a hatred more acidic than Ravener drool. Still, despite his remarks and his death glare, Alec was slumped down in his seat, arms folded over his chest and shoulders tensed, as though he’d really rather not be the center of attention.

He was actually quite good-looking, but Kal couldn’t find it in him to be attracted to a guy that currently looked like he’d rather like to rip Kal’s throat out―and not in a kinky way.

“I’m not quite sure what you mean, Alec.” Hodge looked at the boy with a temperate gaze, as if he were a bit surprised by the boy’s outburst. “Are you suggesting that he’s lying?”

“Of course he is. Look at him, Hodge―he’s a mundie, and a little kid at that. There’s no way he took on a Ravener all by himself.”

“I’m not a little kid,” Kal protested. “I’m sixteen.”

“The same age as Isabelle,” said Hodge. “Would you call her a child?”

Alec scoffed. “Isabelle hails from one of the greatest Shadowhunter dynasties in history. This _boy_ , on the other hand, hails from New Jersey.”

The way he said _boy_ made it sound like the dirtiest insult he could come up with. “Actually, I’m from Brooklyn,” he said cooly, doing his best to bite back his ire. “And I’ve killed monsters that could eat you for breakfast, you― _Putto_!” Kal shouted suddenly, snapping his fingers. “That’s what they’re called!”

Alec blinked, looking astonished. “ _What_ did you call me?”

“No, not you,” Kal said, waving him off. “Those stupid little Valentine babies. They’re called _puttos_. I just remembered.”

The dark-haired Shadowhunter looked baffled, glancing at Jace as if to say _your mundane has lost his mind._ Jace, on the other hand, was snickering to himself, shaking his head, and only stopped when Alec shot him a glare.

“We may be _parabatai,_ ” Alec responded through a clenched jaw, “but your flippancy is wearing on my patience.”

 _Parabatai._ The word sounded Greek, but Kal couldn’t place its meaning.

“And your obstinacy is wearing on mine,” Jace shot back. “I saw him drive the seraph blade through the Ravener’s skull myself, Alec. Are you doubting my word?”

Alec narrowed his eyes. “Even if he did manage to kill it,” he said in a way that made it sound like he didn’t believe it at all, “he’s still a mundane, and it isn’t right for him to be here. Mundies aren’t allowed in the Institute for good reason. Were the Clave to find out about this, they wouldn’t be pleased.”

Had it been just about anybody else, Kal might have said that it was okay, that he had somewhere else to go. But there was something about Alec’s clear dislike for him that made it hard for Kal to bite his tongue. He stepped forward, ready to smack a bitch, but Hodge put out a hand― _wait._ Reluctantly, Kal stood down.

“That’s not entirely true,” Hodge said. “Under certain circumstances, the Law does allow us to offer sanctuary to mundanes, such as when they are in danger from the Downworld. A Ravener has seemingly attacked Kal’s mother; it’s reasonable to believe that he might have been next.

“Guardian,” Kal said quickly. “Jocelyn’s no relation to me.”

Alec didn’t seem to care either way. “Raveners are search-and-destroy beasts. They act under orders from warlocks or powerful demon lords, not on their own. What interest would a demon or a warlock have in an ordinary mundane household?” He turned to Kal, shooting icy daggers of hate with his eyes. “Any thoughts?”

“Hm, I don’t know, perhaps I should just ask her. Oh, wait, I can’t!” Kal snapped. “I don’t know. As far as I knew, Jocelyn was about as mortal as mortal could be. She didn’t even like the _mention_ of magic. Maybe she had a side business where she sold souls on the Black Market.”

Hodge sighed, reaching up to stroke the bird on his shoulder. “It seems the time has come to notify the Clave.”

“What?” The way Jace said it, it almost came out as a yelp. “We can’t―”

Suddenly, Kal wasn’t very sure that he wanted to know what this “Clave” was. There was a little bit of panic in the blonde’s voice that wasn’t very reassuring.

“It made sense to keep Kal’s presence here a secret when we were unsure whether he would recover,” said Hodge, looking as though he were just as surprised at Jace’s outburst aa Kal was. “But now he has, and he is the first mundane to pass through the doors of this Institute in over a century. The Law decrees that the Clave must be informed.”

“Absolutely,” Alec agreed. Kal decided right away that if Alec liked the idea, it probably meant that whatever the Clave was likely to do to him wouldn’t be pleasant. “I could get a message to my father―”

Whatever he was going to continue to say died on his tongue when Jace cut him off. “He’s not a mundane,” the blonde declared.

Hodge looked at Jace in surprise. Alec made a choking noise, like the rest of his words had gotten backed up in his throat with their sudden interruption. The silence that ensued was pregnant with implications.

“Jace is right,” Kal said. He opened his mouth to tell them that he was a demigod, but Jace shot him a look that said _Don’t._ Frowning, Kal shut his mouth again, wondering what Jace was planning on telling them if it wasn’t the demigod thing.

Jace turned to Hodge, looking unsettlingly… _nervous._ He twisted the ring on his finger, focusing on that rather than on his tutor’s face. “That night, when Kal killed the Ravener, one of its teeth broke off in his arm. There was poison in his veins and he collapsed―he would have died. So I used my stele―put an _iratze_ on the inside of his arm. I thought―”

“Have you lost your _mind_ ?” Hodge demanded, slamming his hands down on the top of the desk so hard that Kal was surprised it didn't crack. Hugo the raven let out an offended caw and launched himself off of Hodge’s shoulder, landing on an iron perch sitting a few feet away. “You know what the Law says about placing Marks on mundanes! You― _you_ of all people ought to know better!”

“But it worked,” Jace instisted. “Kal, show them your arm.”

A bit startled by the attention suddenly on him, Kal held out his right arm. The scar that he’d noticed earlier flashed in the light. The pinkness on his wrist had completely faded, as though it had never been there in the first place.

“See?” said Jace, gesturing to Kal’s arm. “It didn’t hurt him at all.”

“That’s not the _point._ ” Hodge still looked furious. “You could have turned him into a Forsaken!”

“I can’t _believe_ you, Jace. To be so stupid as to Mark a mundane―!” Alec shook his head. “Only Shadowhunters can receive Marks from the Gray Book―they _kill_ mundanes―”

Kal held up his hands. “Hold up. You’re telling me that this _thing_ could have _killed_ me?” he demanded, looking at Jace.

“I had no choice. You would have died without it,” Jace told him. “Haven’t you been listening?” he asked the other Shadowhunters, exasperation leaking into his tone. “He’s not a mundane. He must have Clave blood. His mother could have been a Shadowhunter in exile, which could explain why demons were after her―maybe she made some enemies?”

“My mother is dead,” Kal said. It came out harsher than he intended, and Jace flinched. “She died nine years ago. Jocelyn Fray―a.k.a. the woman who is missing, my guardian―is no blood relation to me. I’ve said this before.”

“Your father, then. What about him?”

Kal almost could have laughed. “My father is _not_ a Shadowhunter. That much, I can assure you.”

It was another long moment before anyone spoke. This time, it was Alec who broke the silence. “It’s possible, he conceded, still sounding dubious. “If his mother were a Shadowhunter, and his father a mundane―well, we all know that a relationship like that is against the Law. Maybe they were in hiding?”

Kal wanted to disagree, but found that he frankly…couldn’t. He had only been seven years old when his mother had died. Even his best memories of her were fuzzy, and he knew next to nothing about her life before she met Apollo and had him. He knew next to nothing about _her._ Jocelyn had always gotten upset when talking about Marina Heiler, so he’d never gotten much information out of her.

And if his mother _had_ been a Shadowhunter―Jocelyn and Marina had been friends since they were young. It was more than likely that if Marina was a Shadowhunter, Jocelyn had been too.

He hated it, but this actually made sense.

“I think it’s best that I speak with Kal,” Hodge said. “ _Alone,_ ” he added, seeing Jace’s expression.

Alec pushed himself to his feet. “Fine. We’ll leave you to it.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Jace protested. “I’m the one who found him! You want me here, don’t you?” He whirled to face Kal, searching Kal’s expression for…something.

Kal turned away. “I think Hodge is right,” he said quietly. “We should talk alone.”

The blonde Shadowhunter clenched his jaw. “Fine, then. We’ll be in the weapons room.” He almost sounded disappointed, but before Kal could figure out if that really was the emotion in Jace’s voice, Jace had started up the stairs and was gone in a flash. The door shut behind Alec with a click, and then Kal was alone with Hodge.

“Alright,” Kal said to Hodge, his throat feeling tight. “Let’s talk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When it comes to the Institute, I've taken a lot of liberties with describing it like the image in my head. For this story, I'm using the City of Bones book and graphic novel as source material, and though I wasn't too fond of the movie, I'm using that a little bit as well. The library in my story is a combination of the one described in the book and the one in the movie. Later on, for plot points, I may draw from the Shadowhunters TV show as well (despite my problems with the movie, I was quite fond of the television show), but I'm not entirely sold on that yet.
> 
> Some of you may be wondering about when Ren and the other demigods are going to return. Well, I can't say exactly, but don't worry---it'll be soon. *mysterious grin*
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm going to be working on the next one, and I've got some pretty good ideas about how it should go. If I don't upload it tomorrow, I'll have it up in the next couple days---I'm a little sore from archery practice and will be more-so tomorrow, so I might have difficulty typing. 
> 
> ~Nick


	6. Chapter Six

#  **CHAPTER SIX**

 

“Why don’t you sit down?” Hodge said kindly, gesturing to the overstuffed couch over along the nearby wall. “Is there anything I can get for you? Something to drink? Tea?”

Kal gratefully accepted, sinking into the cushions with a weary nod. “Ah, no thanks,” he said as politely as he could. He pulled the strap of his bag off his shoulder and set it at his feet, slightly reassured upon feeling  _ Solas _ ’s sheath brush against a pillow.

Hodge took a seat in a chair opposite from him, perched on the edge as if ready to jump up at any instant. “Well, let’s start by talking about what happened to you. I’ve heard Jace’s account, of course, but… I want to hear it from you. Starting with the Pandemonium Club, perhaps.”

“Alright,” Kal said. He started to recount what had happened, how he’d been at the Pandemonium for his best friend Ren’s performance when the eidolon bumped into him. Upon realizing that it was a monster, he’d followed it into the storage room. He told about how he’d thought it was a Greek demon, and had thrown his dagger in an attempt at killing it after it had knocked Jace to the ground.

The more he started talking, the more he found it difficult to stop. Before he realized it, he’d told Hodge about Camp Half-Blood, about being a demigod, about where he’d  _ really _ gotten his training. He told him about Celestial bronze, and mentioned the Titan war and the war with Gaea, and even the Roman Camp Jupiter in San Francisco. By the time that Kal had gotten to the part where he passed out in Jace’s arms (something that made him blush deeply when he said it aloud) his mouth felt dry.

Through it all, Hodge had remained respectfully silent, save for the occasional question whenever Kal mentioned something about being a demigod that Hodge didn’t quite understand. By the end of it, the man was looking quite troubled indeed―something that only increased when Kal added something that he’d previously forgotten.

“Oh! The creature in my apartment―a Ravener, right? It said a name,” Kal told Hodge. “I only remember it because when Jocelyn called me, she said the same name. She said that he’d found her.”

“And just what,” Hodge said, looking at Kal over the tops of his glasses, “was that name?”

“Valentine.”

Hodge jerked upright. “ _ Valentine?” _ he repeated. “Are you certain?”

Kal nodded. “Definitely. The Ravener said that this Valentine hadn’t warned it that there would be Shadowhunters there, and before…Jocelyn said something about him, that―that Valentine was alive, and that he’d found her.” He toyed with the clay beads in his necklace, furrowing his brow.

“That’s impossible,” Hodge said, shaking his head. “Valentine has been dead for sixteen years.”

Kal couldn’t help it―he let out a bark of a laugh. “If there’s anything that I’ve learned these past five years, death means nothing to the bad ones.”

“No, he’s dead,” Hodge said again. He sounded almost as if he were trying to convince himself.

“Alright, supposing that he  _ is _ dead,” Kal said, leaning forward, “what’s the point in pretending that he isn’t? Why would someone be using his name,  _ now _ of all times?” He propped his elbows on his knees.

Hodge stood and paced back to his desk, hands clasped behind his back. “Of course,” he murmured, half to himself. “It must be because of the Accords.”

“The what?”

“The peace negotiations, between Shadowhunters and Downworlders,” Hodge told him, as if that explained everything. After a moment, he shook his head. “Forgive me. This must be confusing for you.”

“A―a little,” Kal admitted.

With a sigh, Hodge leaned against the desk. “Downworlders are those who share the Shadow World with us. We have always lived in an uneasy peace with them. Vampires, werewolves, the Fair Folk―faeries―and Lilith’s children, warlocks.”

“And that makes Shadowhunters―what? Bionic superhumans?”

“We are sometimes called the Nephilim,” said Hodge. “In the Bible, they were the offspring of humans and wayward angels. The legend of the origin of Shadowhunters tells the tale differently.” He leaned forward, getting a distant look in his eyes. “A thousand years ago, when humans were being overrun by demon invasions from other worlds, a warlock summoned the great Angel Raziel.” Hodge gestured to the statue absently, but he still seemed to be lost in thought. “The Angel selected a group of men and took their blood, mixing it with his own in a cup and giving it to them to drink. Those who drank the Angel’s blood became Shadowhunters, as did their children, and their children’s children. The cup thereafter became known as the Mortal Cup.” 

Kal thought of the repeating motif of the angel with the cup and nodded, suddenly understanding the significance. He glanced again at the statue, and the sword in its hand, wondering about that. Was the sword an important symbol for the Shadowhunters as well, or was it just for decoration? The way it was presented made him lean toward the former, but before he could ask, Hodge continued.

The tutor looked up at Kal then, vision suddenly clear.“Whether or not the legend is fact, it was true that the Cup could always be used to create more Shadowhunters when our ranks were depleted. But now, the Cup is gone. Destroyed by Valentine, just before he died. He set a great fire and burned himself to death, along with his family―his wife and his child. Scorched the land black. No one will build there still. They claim the land is cursed.”

_ Holy shit, _ Kal thought.  _ This Valentine dude was badass.  _ “Cursed?” he asked, for he knew all too well of curses.

Hodge nodded grimly, and when he spoke, his tone was bitter. “Occasionally, the Clave lays down curses as a punishment for breaking the Law, and Valentine broke the greatest Law of all―he took arms up against his fellow Shadowhunters and slew them. He and his group, the Circle, killed dozens of their brethren along with dozens of Downworlders during the last Accords.”

_ Okay, not a badass, _ Kal corrected, feeling like he’d just been punched in the gut.  _ Just a Class-A dickbag traitor, sounds like. _ “ _ Di immortales,” _ he breathed, slumping back on the couch. “Why the hell would he do that?”

“He didn’t approve of the Accords. He despised Downworlders and believed that they should all be slaughtered, wholesale, to keep the world untainted for humans.” Hodge shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe such a crazy idea. “Though they aren’t demons, aren’t invaders, Valentine felt that the Downworlders were demonic in nature, and that was enough. The Clave did not agree―they felt that the assistance of Downworlders was a necessary risk if we were ever to drive off demonkind for good. And who could argue, really, that the Fair Folk do not belong in this world when they’ve been here longer than we have?”

_ And he’s a racist son of a bitch at that, go fucking figure.  _ “That…does make a certain amount of sense,” Kal said. “The part about the faeries, not Valentine’s thing,” he added quickly. “So, um…the Accords? What happened with that?”

“When the Downworlders saw the Clave come to their defense, even against one of their own, they came to realize that the Shadowhunters were not their enemy. Ironically, Valentine’s insurrection against the Accords is what made their renewal possible.” Hodge sat down in the chair again, suddenly looking very tired. “I apologize. This must be a dull history lesson for you. But that was Valentine; a firebrand, a visionary, a man of great charm and conviction―and ultimately, a traitor and a killer. And now someone is invoking his name…” He trailed off.

“Actually, this is kind of fascinating,” Kal said, without really thinking. “Terrible, but fascinating. You know, this whole other world―it’s kind of like finding out about the whole Greek mess all over again.”  _ Just hopefully with less dead friends and titanic wars.  _ “Still, if someone  _ is _ using our friend Val’s name to send a message, who could it be? One of his old cult buddies? And what does Jocelyn have to do with this?”

Hodge almost seemed to hesitate. “I don’t know,” he said in a way that really meant  _ I may have an idea, but I cannot or will not share it at present.  _ “I shall do everything in my power to find out. I shall message the Clave, as well as the Silent Brothers―there’s a chance they may wish to speak with you.”

“Alright.” Kal nodded. “And…about me. I’m just gonna go out on a limb and presume that I can’t just go back and stay at home―”

“That probably wouldn’t be wise,” Hodge agreed, looking a little concerned.

“Alright. I could stay at Camp if I wanted to, but that’s in Long Island, and I have a feeling that you’d like me to stay nearby.” Kal shrugged. “You know, if those guys want to talk to me, or whatever. So, do I stay here, or…?”

There was another moment of silence. Hodge raised his fist to his lips in a thoughtful action that Kal had never actually seen a real person do. “Yes, that would probably be for the best,” he decided.

“Great.” Kal clapped his hands together. “Given that this is probably going to be for a while, I should probably grab a few things from home. Make a quick stop, get some necessities, in and out. Is that permissible?”

Hodge frowned. “I―well, if you must, take Jace with you, simply as a precaution,” he said with a weary sigh. He probably would have argued, but there seemed to be a great burden on his shoulders. He seemed to have aged ten years during their conversation.

“Fantastic.” Kal jumped to his feet, picking his bag off the ground. “Where’s the weapons room?”

“Church will take you.”

The son of Apollo took a wary look at the grumpy little beast that was curled up at the foot of the stairs. Church unfurled himself at the sound of his name and glared back with those yellow-green eyes.

“Ooh, goody, the cat,” Kal muttered. He turned back to Hodge, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. That cat freaked him out more than any monster he could face out there on those streets. “Uh, sir? Thanks for…everything, really. You’re doing a lot to help me, and, uh… Just, thanks.”

Hodge nodded. “You saved Jace’s life,” he said. “It’s the least we could offer you.”

He stood then and returned to his desk―no doubt about to write that letter to this Clave informing them of Kal’s…predicament. Realizing that he’d been dismissed, Kal turned back to the furry little creature at the foot of the stairs.

“Alright, beast,” he said to it. “I’m in search of the room of weapons. Take me to the golden one.”

Church, clearly as uneducated as the rest of them on pop culture references, seemed to roll its eyes at him. It let out a meow that sounded an awful lot like  _ come on, you bloody lunatic, follow me. _

For some reason, in Kal’s head, Church had an Australian accent.

With a glance back at Hodge, Kal followed the furry beast up the stairs and into the unknown.

 

~

 

The weapons room looked like an Ares’ kid’s wet dream boat. The walls were made of blackened steel and covered with racks hung with every sort of weapon imaginable. There were swords, daggers, spikes, maces, pikes, feather staffs, bow staffs, whips (kinky), hooks, crossbows, longbows― _ whew! _ ―and even some that Kal didn’t know the name of. An entire section was dedicated to different pieces of armour made of everything from leather to a type of metal that looked like silver but almost seemed to have a sort of glow to it. The sharp smell of metal and the tough one of real leather practically assaulted the sinuses. 

And in the middle of it all were Alec and Jace, sitting at a long table with their heads together. They were inspecting an object that Kal couldn’t quite see, but Jace looked up when he heard the door close. “Where’s Hodge?” he said.

“Writing to the Silent Brothers,” Kal said, pausing to inspect the craftsmanship on a scimitar. He noticed that most of the weapons were engraved with Marks like the ones the Shadowhunters wore on their skin, but figured that it was a decoration thing and didn’t think much of it.

Alec rolled his shoulders in that way people did when they were uncomfortable and trying not to show it. “Ugh.”

Clasping his hands behind his back, Kal strolled over to their table. “What manner of things busy your hands?” he queried, peering down at whatever they were doing. Three inconspicuous silver tubes sat on the table before the two Shadowhunters, looking totally harmless and not much like weapons at all. But Kal recognized them as the same type of blade that Jace had used against the Ravener―and the shapeshifter, too―the one that sprouted a blade at a word.

“Just polishing these,” replied Jace, gesturing to the tubes. “ _ Amitiel, Halaliel _ , and  _ Puriel _ . They’re seraph blades.” He touched each one as he named it, tapping them so that they rolled into each other and made a sound like distant wind chimes.

“You used one of those against the Ravener,” Kal said, “Uh,  _ Ariel,  _ right? Like the Little Mermaid. “Kiss the girl” and all that shit.”

Jace looked like he had absolutely no idea what Kal was talking about, but chose not to comment on it. “Actually,  _ Ariel _ is the name of an angel,” said Alec, in that sort of pretentious tone that was all like  _ ugh you’re so stupid for not knowing this obscure knowledge.  _ “And given that mermaids are known for eating their victims, it probably isn’t in your best interest to go kissing one.”

Kal really didn’t know how to reply to that. He looked around awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Hey, why don’t you guys use guns?” he asked curiously, noticing a surprising lack of firearms in this so-called weapons room. Even Camp had some specially modified celestial bronze rifles somewhere in the weapons shed, though he didn’t think he’d ever actually seen a camper use one. Partially out of tradition, and partially out of practicality―celestial bronze bullets didn’t last very long in a fight and were a bitch to restock―they’d mostly been left for dust. But these Shadowhunters didn’t seem to have any guns at  _ all _ , which seemed pretty strange.

“To kill demons, our weapons have to be Runed,” said Jace. He picked up a seraph blade from the table―Amitiel―and gestured to a small symbol carved near the top of the tube. It looked just like the winged-diamond-thing he had tattooed over his heart, the Mark he’d shown off to the Eidolon in Pandemonium. “Runes keep gunpowder from igniting, though we don’t know why.”

“Ahh, I see,” Kal said, though he really didn’t understand. He stuck his hands in his pockets, feeling a little awkward for having asked. “Oh, uh, I came for a reason. Hodge said that I could go home―”

The seraph blade in Jace’s hand clattered to the table. “He said  _ what? _ ”

“If you’d  _ let me finish,” _ Kal said, frowning. “He said that I could go home to pick up a few things. But you need to come with me, ‘cause I’m a flight risk or something, so as soon as you’re done here, we’re leaving.”

“What, I don’t get a say in the matter?” Jace raised a brow.

“Nope.” Kal popped the ‘p’, levelling Jace’s gaze with one of his own.

It was a few heartbeats later that Jace grinned, breaking their staring contest. “Alright then. If we go right now, we should have another three, four hours of daylight.” He stood quickly, and when he stepped out around the table, Kal saw that he was no longer barefoot. Heavy black boots that would fit right in at a mosh pit were on Jace’s feet, somehow managing to make him look kind of, um, badass.

It was all Kal could do to contain his surprise. He really had not been expecting for Jace to be so…agreeable. “Alright then,” he said. “...Come on then. My dad’s-a wasting.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” came Alec’s voice as the two headed toward the door. When Kal glanced back, the dark-haired Shadowhunter was already halfway out of his seat, looking on like an expectant puppy. It almost made Kal feel bad for the guy.

“No,” said Jace. He didn’t bother to turn around or even stop when he answered. “That’s alright. Kal and I can handle this on our own.”

The look that Alec shot Kal was more deadly than any of the weapons in that room, and just like that, Kal’s pity for the guy evaporated like the Mist. Seriously, what the fuck was this guy’s problem? He was getting seriously annoyed by Alec’s unreasonable hatred of him.

Maybe it wasn’t in his best interest, but Kal shot Alec a glare back and flipped him the bird as they left. He got a lovely view of Alec’s stunned, furious face before the door shut behind him.

By the time Kal turned back around, Jace was already halfway down the hall. The boy may have been a few inches shorter than Kal, but he was fast, and Kal had to jog a little to catch up to him. “Have you got your house keys?” Jace asked as Kal made it to his side.

“Uh, yeah,” Kal said. He reached to touch the side pocket of his messenger bag and was relieved to feel the hard ridge of his keys through the fabric.

“Good. Not that we couldn’t break in, of course, but we’d run a greater chance of disturbing any wards that might be up if we did.”

The hall ended abruptly in a small, marble-floored foyer. Opposite of them was one of those old-fashioned cage elevators that reminded Kal of the asylum in  _ Outlast _ , which wasn’t exactly the best comparison to be dredged up. At least this one wasn’t covered in dry blood stains and other suspicious bodily fluids. Ugh.

Jace pushed a button next to the gate, and a lovely grinding noise reached their ears as the elevator rose to meet them. Kal glanced nervously at the other, half-sure that he was about to be lead into a creaking death trap, but Jace seemed unfazed by the noise. To distract himself, Kal turned his focus to his shoes and stared at them until Jace opened the gate.

“After you,” Jace said, holding the gate open and gesturing to the elevator like a proper gentleman.

“Uh, thanks,” Kal muttered, and stepped inside.

The elevator was actually kind of pretty on the inside, new-looking and shiny and gilded, like a decorative bird cage. He almost didn’t notice the lurch or the groaning of the gears as it made its descent.

Kal pushed up his sleeves, suddenly feeling a little stuffy. His gaze caught again on the shiny new-old scar on his forearm, and he absently traced his fingers over the pattern. “Hey, Jace?” he asked, looking up. “How did you know that this would work? That I had Shadowhunter blood?”

Jace sort of glanced at him. “I guessed,” he admitted, sounding a little hesitant to say it aloud. “It seemed the most likely explanation.”

“You  _ guessed _ ?” Kal repeated, incredulous. “You must have been pretty damn sure considering that you could have killed me.”

“I was ninety percent sure,” Jace said, sounding less certain than before.

“Ah,” Kal said, and slapped him.

In all fairness, Kal had intended on giving Jace a whack upside the head, but something in his tone must have given it away, because Jace turned to look at him at the last moment. Ka’s palm cracked across Jace’s face so hard that the blonde staggered back, crashing into the opposite wall of the elevator with a stunned look on his face. Jace stared at Kal in shock, pressing his hand to his cheek. 

“What the hell was that for?” he asked, but he didn’t sound mad. He almost sounded… _ impressed _ .

“I get that I was dying, and that you probably had no choice,” Kal said. “But you took a serious risk with my life and could very well have sent me to see the judges before I was ready, and I’m not exactly the Lord of the Dead’s favorite person right now. That was for possibly almost killing me.” He then smiled. “Still, thanks for saving my life.”

Jace grinned back. “Anytime,” he said, rubbing at his jaw. “Nice right hook, by the way. You never would have gotten it in had my guard been up, but―”

Kal scoffed. “Oh, puh-lease. I could whip your ass from here to Gehenna and back, no contest.”

And for a moment, seeing Jace’s crooked grin, Kal felt a strange warmness in his chest that he hadn’t felt in three years. But then he remembered how they’d met, and where they were going, and the situation he was in. Kal’s smile fell, and he looked away, chastising himself for being so foolish. For letting himself get swept up in the moment.  _ After all, that’s what got Eli killed… _

By the time the elevator screeched to a stop, Kal had remembered his place.  _ No more messing around, _ he told himself firmly. _ You have bigger things to focus on. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -When I originally started writing this chapter, I was in the process of binge-watching Cryotic (a youtuber) play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, in which he played a Malkavian. For those of you who don't know anything about this game (I don't blame you, it's pretty obscure I think), a Malkavian is a type of vampire in the game who are a little messed up in the head and have a very distinct, almost Wonderland-esque riddlish way of talking. When Kal says "I'm in search of the room of weapons. Take me to the golden one." and "What manner of things busy your hands?", I'm referencing that. (I'm sorry, the Malkavian speech pattern is just really fun to play with.)
> 
> -Yes, Camp Half-Blood actually does have celestial bronze guns. They're mentioned in the Lost Hero when Piper is picking out a weapon, but they're never used??? I made up the excuse about the bullets and how they're really inconvenient just to explain away why they aren't used cause Uncle Rick literally gives no explanation. At all. Just kind of mentions them and moves on.
> 
> -Outlast is a horror game that came out in 2013. It takes place in an asylum overrun by psychotic, murderous patients, and the entire place is covered in a lovely splattering of blood and other gruesome bodily fluids. (Given that one of the first things you encounter is an entire team of slaughtered SWAT guys in what used to be a library, stripped of their clothes and their heads, one impaled on a spike and still alive.....yah, this game is fucked up....)
> 
> -Okay, yes. In the book, the rune that Jace marks on Clary is some sort of invisibility rune. It was only in the movie (and I think the TV show as well, but I might be wrong) where they turned it into a healing rune. Oh, and they had it as an iratze in the graphic novel, too. I'm aware that healing runes don't work (at least, don't work as WELL) when there's demon venom in the wound, bUT SCREW IT, IT'S A REWRITE, I CAN DO WHAT I WANT.
> 
> ~Your neighborhood gay, Nick.


	7. Chapter Seven

#  **CHAPTER SEVEN**

 

Kal had sort of been expecting the Shadowhunters to have some sort of Shadowhunter-mobile, so when Jace revealed that they were taking the  _ train _ to Brooklyn, it was hard to hide his disappointment. With nothing much to talk about, they sat in silence for most of the way there. Kal pulled a book from his bag, leaned back, and began to read.

“What are you reading?” Jace asked. When Kal turned to look at him, the Shadowhunter was leaning in like he was trying to read over Kal’s shoulder. It took all of Kal’s willpower to not flinch away.

“ _ The Outsiders _ ,” Kal replied, raising the cover so that Jace could see. “This is probably my, oh, fourth time reading it? The whole dynamic is just  _ fascinating _ ―terrible, but fascinating. The war between the classes, the social stigma, the idea that just because someone’s rich and lives on the right side of the tracks that they’re automatically a good, honorable person―the realism gets me every time, y’know? Shit happens. People die. People discriminate against others based on appearance or background, and if the whole world sees you one way, it can be hard to force your way out of that life. Some people think that if the whole world sees them as something, why not just become that something? It’s just―” He cut himself off, realizing that he was rambling. “I’m sorry, I just…have a lot of feeling about his book.”

Jace raised a blonde brow. “I can see that,” he said, but his tone wasn’t particularly mocking. He’d been quiet throughout Kal’s little rant, intently listening until Kal had cut himself off. It felt…strange to have someone pay so much attention to him.

Flushing, Kal turned away, adamantly focusing on just about  anything but the way that Jace was looking at him. He heard giggling and looked toward it, seeing two girls sitting together a few seats farther down the train and looking at him. They were the kind of girls that Kal usually found annoying, with fake tans and too-blue eyeshadow and pink jelly mules (seriously, who thought those shoes were attractive? Ugh)―the kind of girls that usually paid him no mind. He figured that they were probably just looking at Jace and rolled his eyes, recognizing their bashful gazes as ones of attraction. Girls acted so weird when they thought that someone was cute, and Kal had spent enough time around the Aphrodite kids to recognize the symptoms.

Although…he couldn’t exactly blame them. Jace was admittedly fairly attractive, what with his honey-gold looks and intense, strangely-coloured eyes. He had a simplistic punk thing going on with the all-black clothes and the heavy combat boots, and the scars that were visible on his arms added to the intrigue. And then there was the simple matter of his confidence―the cock-sure way that he held himself that made it feel like he always knew exactly what he was doing.

Too late, Kal realized that he was staring. Jace caught his gaze and cocked a brow. “Can I help you with something?”

“No,” Kal said. “Those girls over there were staring at you.” He winced, realizing how weak of an excuse that was, but attempted to hide it with a roll of his shoulders. “And here I thought that you were invisible to mundanes.”

“Glamour is a pain. Sometimes, we just don’t bother.” Jace ran a hand through his hair and winked at the two girls. One turned to the other and whispered something furiously, blushing like a schoolgirl.

Kal rolled his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. Sure, Jace may be attractive, but he  _ knew _ he was attractive, and that just made him annoying. He went back to his book and tried to ignore the tightness in his chest, but it didn’t work very well.

###  ~

 

“Would you  _ stop _ that?”

Jace glanced at Kal and hummed louder, clearly enjoying how much it annoyed him. The tune was somewhere between the Battle Hymn of the Republic and something like the Happy Birthday song.

They’d left the train station a few minutes ago and had struck off down the sidewalk, heading for Kal’s home. Kal turned his phone over and over in his hands, trying to work up the nerve to call someone, anyone. Ren would be so worried about him. But a part of him was terrified to do so, like maybe if he kept what was happening right now with these Shadowhunter people seperate from his life at Camp Half-Blood, then it wouldn’t be real.

Without glancing up at Jace, Kal unsheathed  _ Solas _ and angled it at the Shadowhunter. “Don’t make me use this on you, Goldielocks.”

Jace’s humming stopped, but he still looked amused. “I’ve been meaning to ask you what that blade is made of,” he ventured, gesturing vaguely to  _ Solas. _ “It looks like bronze, but it’s…different.”

“That’s because it’s  _ celestial _ bronze, smart guy,” Kal told him. “Metal of the gods. Well, the Greek gods, that is. The Romans use Imperial Gold, which is only slightly less badass and, well,  _ gold _ . These are the only two metals capable of destroying a Greek monster.” Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. Kal shoved his phone in his pocket and inspected his dagger. “You said that your weapons had to be Runed to kill your demons, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think celestial bronze could be Runed, too? So it could kill both?”

The Shadowhunter frowned thoughtfully, gazing at  _ Solas _ intensely. His eyes shone in the light of the dipping sun. “That is an interesting question,” he murmured, half to himself. “I’m not entirely certain. As far as I know, Shadowhunters have never encountered  _ demigods _ before, so an experiment like that has never happened. I’ll have to ask Hodge.”

“Shadowhunters have never encountered demigods  _ ever? _ ” Kal shook his head, incredulous. “That sounds…unlikely. New York isn’t that big. Surely we would have run into each other at some point?”

“If we have, I haven’t heard of it.” The thought seemed to trouble Jace.

Sensing that a topic change may be in order, Kal quickly pulled another question out of the back of his brain. “Earlier, what’s his name―Alec―called you something. Par…Para…”

“ _ Parabatai _ ,” Jace replied. “It means a pair of warriors who fight together―who are closer than brothers. Alec is more than just my best friend. My father and his were  _ parabatai _ when they were young. His father was my godfather―that’s why I live with them. They’re my adoptive family.” He went real quiet for a long time, the distant look in his eyes making it seem as though he was lost in the past.

Kal might have said something, but the words fled his mind as he caught sight of his brownstone. The gate was slightly open, creaking in the wind, but otherwise, it looked the same as always. Afternoon sunlight caressed the stone front softly, warm and welcoming. His throat felt tight as he took in the sight, so normal, so serene, as if nothing had ever happened. As if he’d walk in and find Jocelyn loitering around the kitchen, humming Beethoven under her breath, paint streaked on her clothes and in her hair.

“This…this shouldn’t be…” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t there be, I don’t know, police tape, or something? Didn’t we hear sirens?”

“Might have been demons pretending to be police,” Jace said. “They have their ways of covering up their tracks.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out something that looked sort of like a chunky, older cell phone.

“What’s that?” Kal asked curiously, peering at it. It had buttons like a cellphone, but those odd little runes like the ones the Shadowhunters inked onto their skin took the place of the numbers. “Some sort of indestructible Nokia weapon?”

Jace glanced at him. “This is a Sensor. It picks up demonic frequencies.”

“Ahhh, demon shortwave. Groovy.”

“Come on.” Jace held the Sensor in front of him as he approached the front door, his gaze switching between looking about cautiously and studying the screen on his contraption. As he took to the stairs, the thing let out a little metallic click, like a mechanical bug, and Jace stopped in his tracks. He turned back to where Kal was still standing on the other side of the gate, frowning. “It’s picking up trace amounts of activity, but that could just be left over from that night. I’m not getting anything strong enough for demons to be present now.”

Not entirely reassured, Kal stepped through the gate, letting it clank shut behind him. He turned  _ Solas _ over in his grip, prepared to have to use it. Just because Jace said that there weren’t any demons inside didn’t mean that there couldn’t be any other nasties. When Kal reached the top step, he met Jace’s eyes. Jace gave him a small nod and pushed open the door.

The entryway was still completely dark, and it took a few minutes for Kal’s eyes to adjust. By that time, Jace was already at the foot of the stairs. He took the hand that wasn’t holding the Sensor and ran his fingers along the banister. 

“What is it?” Kal asked. The sound of his own voice, even as a whisper, was deafening when it broke through the hush, and he flinched.

Jace raised his hand, showing off the blackish-red substance staining his fingers. “Blood,” he said.

“Human?”

“Hard to say.” Jace wiped his hand on his pants and looked back at the Sensor. “Whatever left it must have been recent. It’s still wet.”

The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Kal swallowed hard, gripping Solas’s hilt tighter. For the first time he noticed just how empty the building felt; even Dorothea's door was tightly closed, the apartment beyond uncharicteristically silent. The lady may have driven him up the wall upon occasion, but he found himself hoping that she hadn’t been hurt.

“Well that’s reassuring,” Kal muttered.

Steeling his nerves, Kal started up the stairs. The sound of Jace’s footsteps behind him made him feel more secure than it probably should have. They reached the landing, and Kal instinctively went to pull his keys from his bag, only to discover that he didn’t have to.

Oddly enough, it looked like the handle had been fixed, but when he reached for the handle the door pushed open at his slightest touch. Kal glanced warily at Jace before pushing it open further.

Cool air spilled out onto the landing like they’d opened the door to a walk-in freezer, the AC turned up way higher than what Jocelyn would have allowed. The sweat on Kal’s skin cooled instantly, turning to icicles stinging his flesh. He felt goosebumps rise on his arms as he moved quickly through the short hallway and into the living room.

The scene that awaited him was…baffling. The room was completely empty―the furniture, the bookshelves, even the  _ curtains _ mysteriously missing. The floor was scuffed and dirty, like someone, or a group of someones, had moved all of it out manually. All the scraps of Jocelyn's paintings had been cleared away, though Kal spotted a little ball of pillow stuffing left behind by the fireplace.

Kal gently touched the wall where a slightly darker square had been left on the wallpaper. One of Jocelyn’s paintings had hung there, but he couldn’t remember which one. That disturbed him more than anything.

The kitchen was just as empty. The table and the chairs had vanished, as had the refrigerator, leaving behind a gap in the counters like a missing tooth. The cabinets stood open, baring their, well, bare shelves. A suspicious reddish substance had dried in a pool by where the fridge had been, but when Kal approached, the sharp spicy scent of Tabasco sauce told him that it wasn’t blood. 

“You were covered in Tabasco sauce,” Kal recalled, turning to Jace. “Did you…?”

Jace was standing in the doorway, watching him carefully, but the mention brought red into his cheeks. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Oh, good gods, you did.” Kal bit his lip to keep from giggling. The image of Jace slipping and sliding in Tabasco sauce was almost funnier than picturing him singing about far off places and daring sword fights and princes in disguise. “Behold, the mighty Shadowhunter!” he proclaimed, bowing dramatically. “Felled only by the terrible Tabasco sauce! Someone must really hate Taco Tuesdays, eh?”

Jace wasn’t amused. “Are you done?”

“Almost. What planet do you think he’s from, folks? Tabascos? Ooh, ooh! Who you do you think would win in a fight, Jace―one mighty Shadowhunter, or a spicy boi?” Grinning at the look of utter bewilderment on Jace’s face, Kal figured his work was finished…for now. “Okay, now I’m done.”

In all honesty, Kal wasn’t quite sure how he was managing to remain chipper. Maybe it was due to the neutral blankness of the apartment, allowing him to distance himself from the place―like, if he couldn’t recognize it as home, then it would mean that home was still intact somewhere else. Or maybe it was because he knew, in some deep, buried part of him, that if he allowed himself to think about what was happening too much, he’d curl up into a ball of despair and would never move again.

Whatever it was, he didn’t want to think about it.

“My room’s back there, obviously,” Kal said, gesturing toward the kitchen door. “I just need to grab a few things, and we can get out of here. That is, if my stuff’s still there…” He shook his head, glancing back at the place where the fridge had once been. He couldn’t imagine what use demons could possibly have for a  _ microwave, _ let alone a big-ass, decade-old refrigerator.

Jace went to nod, but stopped halfway. He tensed, head snapping around to look at the door. In an instant, his seraph blade was in his hand. As if sensing the question that had sprung to the tip of Kal’s tongue, Jace pressed a finger to his lips.

And then Kal heart it. A long, low squeak of the floorboards. Someone―or  _ something _ ―was crossing the living room. That squeaky floorboard was right outside that short hall that lead to the front door; Kal knew from all those times he’d tried to sneak out to meet Ren at two o’clock in the morning because he couldn’t sleep, last summer. 

Quiet, slow footsteps. Boots on hardwood floor. So it probably wasn’t another beast like the one from last time―a Ravener, the Shadowhunters had called it―but that didn’t mean it was human. Most Greek monsters could take a human form, and there was that shapeshifting demon of the Shadowhunters’. Kal didn’t know how many more of their demons could take human form.

Jace whispered the name of his seraph blade; it flared to life, its blade shooting out with a soft  _ shhhk _ . Meeting Kal’s eyes, he mouthed the words, “ _ On three. _

_ “One…” _

Kal flipped  _ Solas _ in his grip.

_ “Two…” _

Jace put a hand against the door.

“Three,” said Kal, and Jace shoved the door open.

Something let out a great screech and tackled Jace to the floor. Completely taken off guard, Kal staggered back. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but his brain decided that it was a dial-up computer with shitty graphics. Jace and the assailant were rolling about on the floor, struggling. The thing looked humanoid, with something like hair that was as pink as cotton candy.

No, wait.

That  _ was _ hair.

“ _ Ren _ ?” Kal demanded.

The pink-haired girl pinned Jace’s wrists under her knees and looked up, tossing her hair out of her eyes. “ _ Kal _ ?” Ren exclaimed, her eyes going wide. Immediately forgetting Jace, she leapt to her feet and hugged Kal so tightly he could hardly breath. Then, before he could even think to hug her back, she pulled away and slapped him. 

“You’re such an asshole!” she shouted. “You disappear for three days and don’t even bother to call? Or text, or do something to let me know that you’re alive? Where the  _ fuck _ have you been?” Ren pointed back at where Jace was just getting to his feet, her cheeks puffing out with anger. “If you tell me that it’s ‘cause you’ve been shacking up with this bleach-blond wannabe-goth guy, I’m going to murder both of you.”

Kal was torn between feeling guilty and utterly horrified. “It’s not like that, Ren. I wasn’t shacking up! And I couldn’t call you because I was sort of unconscious―”

“ _ What?!” _

Flinching, Kal held his hands up. “It’s a long story. First off―Jace, you okay over there?”

Jace brushed off the front of his shirt. “The only thing bruised is my pride,” he responded drily, squinting at Ren. Clearly he wasn’t too happy about being taken down by a fabulous five-foot-nothing black girl with more awesome hair than he. “And for the record, I’m a natural blond.”

Ren looked him up and down, cocking a hip. “Mm hm,” she said with a deadpan expression. “Where the hell did you pick this guy up, Kal?”

“Like I said, it’s a…long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Letting out a sigh, Kal glanced at Jace. “Can I tell her, or is there some sort of Statute of Secrecy that I have to obey?”

Jace pursed his lips. “Mundanes aren’t supposed to know about the Shadow World unless there’s no other choice but to tell them,” he said. “That being said, she isn’t a mundane, is she? She’s one of yours. A demigod.”

“How do you know that?” Ren demanded. “How does he know that, Kal? Who  _ is _ this guy?”

“Yeah,” Kal told Jace. “Jace, this is Ren, my sister. She’s a child of Apollo like me. Ren, this is Jace, and he’s a, well…it’s complicated.”

“ _ What’s _ complicated? What’s going on?”

Kal took a deep breath. “Ren, you know how we found out that there were Roman gods two years ago? And then there was that thing with the Egyptian magicians that we ran into in Brooklyn? And the Norse guys in Boston?”

Blinking, Ren took a step back. “I swear to the gods, if you tell me that the Aztec gods are alive and well and he’s the great grandson of Quetzalcoatl, I’m going to jump out of that window.”

“No, no.” Kal shook his head. “Not gods, not this time. It’s a lot more complicated than that. It really started at the Pandemonium club…”

 

###  ~

 

For Ren’s credit, she didn’t freak out. Actually, she was very quiet while Kal explained, listening in a stunned sort of silence. She didn’t even bother to tease him when he got to the part where he collapsed into Jace’s arms, or when he woke up in the infirmary in nothing but his boxers. When he finally finished talking, she was still silent―utterly and uncharicteristically silent. It wasn’t reassuring.

Kal didn’t feel very good about it, but he sort of left out the part where it was revealed that he had Shadowhunter blood. He didn’t mention the rune that Jace had marked on his arm, attributing his recovery to sheer luck and ambrosia, and he hoped that the scar was too pale for Ren to really notice it. When it came to the part where he had to stay at the Institute, he stumbled over an excuse about how they thought he might have answers about Jocelyn’s disappearance or something or rather, hoping that Ren wouldn’t pry. She didn’t, but he was pretty sure that she wasn’t entirely fooled, either.

Finally, Ren spoke. “That…is not what I was expecting,” she admitted, licking her lips. “Demons, werewolves, warlocks, half-angel people, actual vampires instead of  _ empousai _ ―just when I thought our lives couldn’t get any weirder!” She shook her head, vibrant curls bouncing. 

“Tell me about it,” Kal muttered.

Ren’s gaze softened, and she touched his arm gently. “How are you holding up?” she asked quietly, worry furrowing her brows. “With Jocelyn missing…”

“I’m fine, Ren,” Kal responded. “Really. Honestly, I’m taking this so well that I don’t know what that says about  _ me _ .” He tried for a smile, but it fell flat. “I’ll be better once we figure out what the hell’s going on and find Jocelyn.”

“Even if she’s…?” Ren didn’t seem to be able to finish the thought.

Kal nodded grimly, swallowing hard. “Yeah. Either way, the bastard that took her is going to see the judges, and I’m the one who’s going to send him there.”

“Just promise me something, okay?” When Ren met his eyes, her own were glistening. “Don’t do anything stupid. I already thought I lost you twice now, asshole. I can’t…I can’t do that again.”

A horrid, sudden thought struck him then: Camp. Kal had been missing for three days. The apartment he lived in had been found all clawed up, and neither he nor his mother had been seen since he’d run out of Java Jones without explanation. Usually when something like that happened, campers were considered dead. Percy Jackson had been missing for three days when they’d officially declared him a casualty of war―before he crashed his own funeral, like an ass. Kal could still remember sitting in the amphitheatre, looking down at the burial shroud for a guy he barely knew, fully resigned to saying goodbye to another stranger, and then seeing that guy come  _ back. _

Even more prominent, he remembered what happened a little less than a year later. The stage of the amphitheatre covered in shrouds. Too many dead. Too many good kids dead. In the collection, a shroud of gorgeous silvery grey the same colour as the eyes of the boy it covered, eyes that would never open again. Kal remembered looking over at where Percy Jackson was standing and being gripped by a bitterness more terrible than his despair. 

He didn’t know which of his feelings at that moment had been worse, his bitterness that Percy turned out to be alive when so many others weren’t, or his guilt for thinking such a thing. He still didn’t know.

“Did they…do they think I’m dead?” Kal’s throat felt dry.

Ren shook her head again, rubbing at her eyes. “Most of them do, but I managed to get Chiron to hold off on burning your shroud just yet. They’re going to do it tonight. They won’t believe me if I just say I saw you. If you can come back to camp, show them you’re alive―” She trailed off, searching his face. “But you can’t, can you?  _ They _ won’t let you leave.”

Kal looked over to where Jace was leaning against the counter, picking at his nails with one of his knives. They were talking in quiet voices, but the kitchen wasn’t very large, and Kal knew that Jace could hear every word.

“I can talk to them,” Kal said. “Ask if they’ll allow it. I’m sure they’ll understand.” He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s a two hour drive, though. I don’t know whether I’ll make it back by sunset.”

“If we leave now, we can make it.” Ren gave him a pleading pout, engaging the expression that he’d heard called a ‘puppy dog face.’ “Please?”

“Ren, we’ll talk about this later, okay?” She opened her mouth to protest, but Kal silenced her with a look. He looked back at Jace as he traced seven letters against her bare skin.  _ T-R-U-S-T M-E. _ The Shadowhunter didn’t even glance up. “Wait for us in the lobby. I just need to grab my things.”

Ren nodded. “Yeah, okay. But we  _ will _ talk about this.” She shot Jace a withering glare before pushing through the kitchen door. Her footsteps receded into the hallway and faded.

“Well,  _ she _ was lovely,” Jace drawled, raising a brow at Kal. “Pray tell, is she always so cuddly, or does she just like me?”

Kal snorted. “Yeah, she’s cuddly alright. Like pythons are cuddly.” 

Shaking his head, he left the kitchen and headed for his bedroom. Only a glance back revealed that Jace had followed him; even in those heavy-ass boots, the guy managed to move quieter than a mouse. Impressive.

He halted in his tracks at the door to his room, something feeling…not quite right. There was an electric feel in the air, a silent buzzing against his skin that made the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. “Jace,” Kal said quietly. “Are you sure that there aren’t any demons here?”

“I’m not sensing any,” Jace responded, barely louder than a whisper. He was standing too close; Kal could feel the warmth of Jace’s breath on the side of his neck. “I’d say they’re long gone.” There was something distant in Jace’s voice, like his mind was somewhere else. 

Swallowing hard, Kal reached for the knob to his door. It was shockingly, impossibly cold, like it had been in a freezer all day―the kind of cold that burned. Jace grabbed his arm, shouting,  _ “Wait!” _ But it was too late. Kal had already turned the knob, though pulling it open was like trying to pull a hairbrush out of congealing honey―

The door exploded outward, and Kal went flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Sorry for the wait. :)
> 
> \- Okay, I'll admit it. I have a bit of a fanboy appreciation for the Outsiders. I'm just a sucker for most things Greaser, and the Outsiders kind of changed my life...but I won't go into that now. (If you've read my original book, currently named "the Academy", you'll see more of that obsession there. The Outsiders plays a bigger role than it probably should, to be honest. You probably haven't read "the Academy" because I put it up on Quotev, but if you like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter---or just my writing---I can put a link to it. All you have to do is ask. :) )
> 
> \- I had Kal bring up the whole "can celestial bronze be runed" thing for a reason. Believe it or not, a lot of thought has gone into molding these two worlds together---and a lot of consultation with my father/editor. (He's the only person I know who knows both subject matters and can debate stuff with me. Also, he's a writer too, just not a published one, yet.)
> 
> \- A Nokia is a phone. There's a meme about it being indestructible...I don't know. I really don't know memes, sorry.
> 
> \- In a previous version of this "Shadowhunters meet demigods" story, I had Kal (well, the character in his place) slip on the spilled Tabasco sauce in the kitchen while being attacked by the Ravener. In this version, I instead had Jace slip in it off screen, but I realized while writing this chapter that I never actually explained that. So....here it is, a kind-of sloppy afterthought. *shrugs*
> 
> \- "singing about far off places and daring sword fights and princes in disguise" is a reference to Belle's theme from the beginning of Beauty and the Beast. A few chapters ago I made another reference to it when they first went into the library.
> 
> \- "What planet do you think he's from? Tabascos?" is a reference to how Superman is from Krypton and is weakened by Kryptonite.
> 
> \- "Who you do you think would win in a fight, Jace―one mighty Shadowhunter, or a spicy boi?" is another meme. I'm so sorry. I have no excuse.
> 
> \- In Harry Potter, the "Statute of Secrecy" was the law about keeping the Magical world hidden from the Muggle (non-magical) one.
> 
> -In the Battle of the Labyrinth, Percy Jackson gets shot out of a volcano (long story) and ends up in Ogygia with Calypso, daughter of Atlas and eternal prisoner on an island in its own dimension. Time works wonky there, so Percy isn't sure how long he stays before a magical raft shows up to take him back to Camp Half-Blood. When he arrives, he walks into the amphitheater to find that the whole camp has presumed him dead and is about to burn his burial shroud. I say that Percy was gone for three days, but in all honestly I don't really know how long he was gone---I couldn't find the answer online, and I didn't have access to my copy of the book to check for myself. I don't even know if it was ever expressly stated. Sorry.
> 
>  
> 
> Okay, yes. This chapter is kind of sloppy. I was on Spring Break while I wrote this, running on minimal sleep, Dr. Pepper, and the first two seasons of NCIS. It really needs to be edited and repaced, but honestly....I'm too lazy. I just wanted to get it out. I'm sorry.
> 
> I don't know how long the next couple chapters will take, because I'm sincerely debating between two different ways I could go with it. So....I'm sorry if it takes a long time again.
> 
> Your exhausted neighborhood gay, Nick.


	8. Chapter Eight

#  **CHAPTER EIGHT**

 

Kal’s back hit the wall with a  _ crack _ , knocking the breath from his lungs. 

He slumped to the ground, stunned. For a few moments, he couldn’t think, couldn’t breath, couldn’t move. The world was going at half-speed around him, as sluggish as his mind.

The first thing that filtered through the haze was the  _ thing _ standing in the hall between him and Jace. A hulking beast, something not quite human. A cyclops? No, no. This thing wasn’t a Greek monster. Kal didn’t know how he could tell, but he could. 

It looked like a huge man, a zombie with the same condition that made Andre the Giant famous for his size. Kal couldn’t remember what it was called. Its skin was grey, withered, corpse-like, and positively covered with terrible scars. Some of them seemed to have a shape to them, like the Shadowhunters’ Marks, but most of them seemed pretty shapeless―or maybe there was just so many of them on top of each other that they became indistinguishable. Its hair was matted, the clothing it wore in tatters. There was an impossibly large battle ax gripped in one massive hand. The stench of decomposing flesh and sweat permeated the air; Kal briefly wished that he’d lost his sense of smell when he’d smacked into the wall, before realizing that wishing for a disability was pretty shitty of him.

_ I’m being attacked by a fucking DnD monster, _ Kal thought vaguely.  _ My horoscope came true. _

Then the beast let out a bellow and staggered back; Jace had slashed at it with his seraph blade. Kal didn’t remember seeing Jace pull the blade out―he didn’t remember Jace picking it off the floor after Ren knocked him down―but it was in his hand now, a terrible, beautiful, destructive thing that trailed blue fire as Jace brought it down.

The monster crashed into the door it had just burst out of, nearly ripping it from its hinges―only inconvenience for a moment, but enough time to give Jace the time he needed. He ducked around it and hauled Kal to his feet, shoving him out into the living room.

They practically slid out onto the landing, Jace whirling back around to slam the door shut. Kal backed away toward the stairs, allowing himself to catch his breath but preparing to dash down them if the thing broke loose. The door was locked―he’d heard it click automatically―but a creature like that wouldn’t be stalled for long by something so simple. Kal had seen monsters melt wooden doors like these with acidic spit. He really hoped this thing didn’t have acidic spit.

The moment he could breathe again, he met Jace’s eyes. The Shadowhunter seemed almost  _ excited, _ a manic look in his eyes. It was obvious that he loved the thrill of a fight. 

It took everything in Kal for him to keep from shouting,  _ Now is not the time to be getting off to monster killing, you fucking psycho! _

“What the hell is that thing?!” he snapped instead, pressing a hand to his chest.

No sooner had the words left his mouth did the door give a tremendous shudder, the beast throwing its body against it. The entire building seemed to shake; Kal would have lost his balance had he not thrown out a hand to grab the railing.

“Trouble,” Jace said, and flashed a grin.

“What’s going on?” Ren was at the bottom of the stairs, hands raised and feet apart in a defensive position. A  _ xiphos _ had appeared in her hand―it had a proper Greek name, Kal was sure, but he’d only ever heard her call it  _ Solar Flare. _ Jace frowned at her for just a moment, as if wondering where she’d been hiding a sword as long as her forearm, but smartly didn’t say anything.

“Monster. One of theirs.” Kal jerked his head toward Jace. “Get outside, we can handle this.”

There was no doubt that Kal could have phrased this better, as the furious expression that crossed Ren’s face indicated that she thought she was implying that she was incapable of something, but there was no time. The monster slammed into the door again; the wood began to splinter, buckling in the middle. One more blow and it’d give way.

Kal’s hand went to Solas’s sheath before realizing that it wasn’t there. Even if it had been, he didn’t know if it would work on this beastie. It hadn’t done much, if anything, to the thing from the Pandemonium. And he didn’t have Jace’s seraph blade anymore.

Panicked, Kal looked to Jace. Their eyes met. “Downstairs,” Jace told him.

“But―”

“Hurry!” Jace shoved something into Kal’s hands, and then Kal was stumbling down the stairs, not allowing himself to think twice. He jumped the last three steps, skidding across the tile. Only once he regained his balance was he able to see what he was holding―a dormant seraph blade.

What was he supposed to do with this? He didn’t know how to activate it!

Kal whirled, frantically looking for Jace―there! A flash of gold, and gleeful laughter over the monster’s bellows. He was dancing about it with surprising agility, impressive in the tight space of the landing, slashing at it every chance he got. Kal could only stare, rapturous, at the sight before him. 

The beast’s ax slammed into the banister, missing Jace’s head by hardly an inch. It tried to pull it out but abandoned it when Jace landed another blow to its torso. It lunged at him, howling, and―

_ Thunk. _

Jace stabbed it in the throat.

For a moment, the monster’s body swayed at the top of the stairs. Then it fell forward, toppling down with a tumultuous series of terrible crashing.

The entire fight was over in what felt like an instant. Kal blinked, once, twice, thrice, just to be certain that he was seeing things right. The thing really was twitching at the bottom of the stairs, broken and exuding rotten blood from multiple open wounds in its chest and arms. Now he could see its face, and he rather wished he couldn’t―the thing’s features were almost completely obliterated by scar tissue. Kal had never wondered what festering eyeballs looked like before, but now he knew.

It didn’t seem to be quite dead, but it wasn’t getting up again. The seraph blade jammed into its neck made sure of that. And Jace―

_ Where was Jace? _

The sound of groaning made Kal run over to the giant’s corpse. There was Jace, his legs pinned beneath the thing’s massive shoulder, his right arm bent at an unnatural angle. “ _ Fuck,” _ he muttered, pushing himself to a sitting position as best he could. “Didn’t move fast enough. My legs―”

“Hold still.” Kal bent down by Jace’s head, slipping his arms under Jace’s. “Ren!”

Ren, previously stock-still and staring at them, snapped out of her gaze. In a flash, her sword disappeared, reverting back to its dormant form. She took off the four-fingered, brass-knuckle-like monstrosity of a ring and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans, before dashing over to help. 

She pushed the beast’s shoulder up while Kal dragged Jace out from under it. The moment he was free, Jace struggled to his feet.

“This thing’s still alive,” said Ren, wiping her hands on her jeans. “What should we do?”

She looked to Kal as if he might have the answer, startling him. Kal wasn’t used to being the one that people looked to.

“Jace?” Kal asked, glancing at him.

Jace reached for the blade he’d given Kal, but Kal pulled away. “No,” he said. “I can do it.”

For a moment, Jace just looked at him. Then he said, “It’s name is  _ Halaliel.” _

At first, Kal wasn’t quite certain why the name of this weapon was significant. But then he remembered the fight against the Ravener, how Jace’s blade then had activated after he’d shouted its name.  _ Ariel! _

Angling the handle away from the others, Kal took a breath. “ _ Halaliel _ ,” he said hesitantly, feeling slightly foolish. But sure enough, there was a  _ whoosh! _ and the crystal blade shot out.

“ _ Whoa _ ,” Ren breathed. “ _ Cool _ .”

Feeling like a badass, Kal stepped over the thing’s body and raised the blade. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he brought it down and severed the thing’s head.

Kal expected the body to vanish, but it didn’t. Blood gushed out of the stump, splattering his pants and shoes―and, since his Chucks were canvas, that meant his feet were drenched too. It took everything in him to not squeal in disgust or do something else just as embarrassing. 

_ Ewwwwwww. _

“It didn’t disappear,” said Ren weakly. She’d gone a dark shade of green. “I thought your demons disappeared too!” She looked to Jace almost accusingly, as if it were his fault that the monster existed in the first place.

“Yeah, that wasn’t a demon.” Jace pulled something from his belt, wincing when he moved his broken arm. It was an odd little thing, a thin silver tube slightly thicker than a pen, with an end that tapered to a point. It didn’t look like a weapon, but then again, neither did a seraph blade in its dormant form.

Seeing their curious gazes, Jace’s lips quirked up into a ghost of a smile. “This is a stele,” he said. He stuck it between his teeth so that he could pull up the sleeve on his broken arm, revealing an old scar. It had a shape, something like the tattoos that he’d once bore. “And this,” he said, taking the stele back into his hand, “is what happens when a Shadowhunter is injured.” 

He pressed the tip to his skin and began to trace over the old scar, thick black lines appearing in its wake like it was a paintbrush. When he was finished, he placed the stele back where he’d pulled it from, but Kal’s eyes were glued to the mark left behind.

_ The shape was identical to the scar on the inside of his arm. _

Kal closed his hand over his wrist, glancing nervously at Ren. Thankfully, she was captivated by the mark on Jace’s arm, which was quickly fading back to a scar. And then it was gone.

Jace breathed out, his face relaxing. Slowly he moved his arm―working the elbow first, then the wrist, then finally stretching out his fingers. 

Instantly Ren grabbed his arm, yanking it towards her. “That’s incredible!” she exclaimed, turning it over, prodding various muscles or bones. “How?”

“That was an  _ iratze _ ―a healing rune,” Jace said. “Drawing a rune with the stele grants the Marked Shadowhunter temporary abilities.” When Ren didn’t let go, he sighed. “Can I have my arm back yet?”

“Oh, uh, sorry.” Ren quickly dropped his arm and stepped back.

Jace rubbed his wrist where she’d gripped it and turned to the beast’s body. He nudged the head with his foot―it rolled a few inches before getting caught on what was left of its nose. The metallic, dead scent of blood was overpowering.

“We’ll have to report this to Hodge,” he said, eyeing the head in disgust. “He won’t be happy.” Something about the way he said this made Kal think that Jace actually enjoyed the idea of alarming his tutor. 

“Why? What is it?” Kal asked.

“You see the scars all over its face?”

“Yeah.”

“Those were made with a stele, like this one.” He tapped his belt. “This is what can happen if you Mark someone who doesn’t have Shadowhunter blood. Just one Mark would burn, but multiple power ones carved over and over, and you get something like this.” Jace jerked his chin toward the corpse. “The runes are agonizingly painful. The Marked ones go insane―the pain drives them out of their minds.”

“Why would anyone do that to themselves?” Ren asked, horrified.

“Nobody would. It’s something that gets done to them,” said Jace. Nobody asked the question, but he answered it anyway. “By a warlock, maybe, or a Downworlder gone bad. The Forsaken are loyal to those who Mark them. They become fierce, mindless killers. They don’t eat or sleep unless you make them, and they die, usually quickly.”

Kal looked at the thing’s body and shuddered. “The perfect soldier,” he muttered.

Jace nodded grimly, before glancing back up the stairs. “There might be more of them. I’d better go check.”

Realizing that he was still holding  _ Halaliel,  _ Kal wiped off the blade and held it out to Jace. “Here, you should take this back.”

Jace looked at him, then to the blade, then back again. His fingers folded over Kal’s, and he pushed his hand back. “Keep it.”

“But―”

“Every Shadowhunter needs their own seraph blade,” he said softly, and the words caught in Kal’s throat.

Instinctively, Kal’s eyes went to Ren, but she didn't seem to notice them. She was staring at the Forsaken’s broken form, face twisted into a grimace. Kal swallowed, looking back at Jace. Then he swallowed hard and nodded.

“Do you…” Kal’s mouth felt dry. “Do you want me to go with you?”

Jace blinked. “No, I think I’ve got it,” he said, and Kal felt inexplicably disappointed. “Stay here and check on your friend.”

He clapped his hand on Kal’s shoulder and turned away heading for the stairs again. Inexplicable disappointment washed over Kal. Usually he hated this sort of thing―hunting, fighting, killing, all of that―but it felt nice to be _needed._ Ren had looked at him as if he’d know what to do, in a situation that wasn’t patching up wounds someone _else_ had gotten from fighting, and it had felt great! And maybe, just maybe, fighting alongside Jace, as insufferable as he could be, had been _fun._

“That’s not a very good idea,” shrilled a voice from across the entryway. “There are more where that thing came from.”

All three of them spun, pulling what weapons they had. Kal snatched  _ Halaliel  _ from where he’d stuck it through his belt loop; Jace pulled another seraph blade of his own; Ren jammed her ring back on her fingers and gripped it, returning it to to its active form. But it wasn’t another Forsaken.

“Madame Dorothea?” Ren demanded, lowering her sword. 

The old woman inclined her head, though she was still squinting at the corpse distastefully. She stood in the doorway of her apartment, draped in purple silk and gold chains like a gypsy tent. “Of course, Shadowhunters aren’t exactly known for their good ideas,” she purred, her dark gaze focused solely on Jace.

“But…” Jace stared at her. “You’re a mundane,” he said dumbly.

_ That’s what you said about me,  _ Kal thought, but didn’t think it was appropriate to say.

“So observant,” Dorothea drawled, amused. “The Clave really broke the mould with you.”

Jace blinked, his confusion melting into anger. “Did you know about this?” he demanded, gesturing to the Forsaken’s corpse. She didn’t respond, but the way she pursed her lips was answer enough. “You did. You knew there was Forsaken in this house and you knew of the Clave and yet you didn’t notify them? The very existence of Forsaken is against the Covenant ―”

Dorothea cut him off with a scoff. “Neither Clave nor Covenant have ever done anything for me,” she replied, lip curling. “I owe them nothing.”

Something in her voice changed, becoming deeper, darker. A shiver shot down Kal’s spine

Jace looked ready to snap again, but Kal shot him a sharp look. “Jace, will you shut up for three minutes?” Turning to Madame Dorothea, Kal said, “You know about these Shadowhunter guys, right? So do you know what could have happened to Jocelyn?”

She shook her head, large, dangly earrings swinging about. Something like pity, but not quite, passed over her features. It didn’t seem quite right, though―like a child mimicking expressions of an emotion they didn’t yet understand. “My advice to you,’” she said, “is to forget Jocelyn. She’s gone.”

The air left Kal’s lungs, the ground tilting under his feet. He somehow managed to find his voice to say, “You mean she’s dead?”

All at once, he became certain of one thing: if Jocelyn was dead, he wouldn’t hesitate to plunge into the Underworld to get her back.

“No,” said Madame Dorothea, almost reluctantly. “I’m sure she’s alive. For now.”

The world snapped back into place, but Kal felt a bit woozy still. He was aware, vaguely, of someone’s hand on his elbow as if to steady him―Jace, probably, as the callusces Kal felt against his bare skin didn’t match those from Ren’s bowstring. 

“You  _ do _ know something,” he said, hearing the anger in his own voice. “What do you know? What happened to her?”

“ _ Kal _ ,” Ren whispered from beside him, half-stunned, half-admonishing. He blinked, taking a step back―he’d been positioned as though he was about to lunge at the elderly woman.

“I don’t want to involve myself in Shadowhunter business,” said Madame Dorothea, shaking her head. She made to move back inside her apartment and close the door, but Jace slammed his hand on it.

“This is an official Clave investigation,” he said, lips pulling back in something more like a wolf bearing its teeth than a grin. “I can always come back with the Silent Brothers.”

“Oh, for the―” Dorothea clenched her jaw as if to keep herself from cursing or yelling or both. She glancing inside her apartment, then back at the three teenagers standing before her. “I suppose you might as well come in.” There was no missing the ire in her voice. “I’ll tell you what I can.”

With a thankless smile, Jace made to move past her, but she blocked his path. “If you tell anyone I helped you, Shadowhunter, you’ll wake up tomorrow with snakes for hair and an extra pair of arms,” she snarled.

“That might be nice, an extra pair of arms,” replied Jace thoughtfully. “Handy in a fight.”

“Not if they’re growing out of your…” Dorothea’s eyes flicked to Ren before returning to Jace, a malicious smile curving her lips. “Neck,” she finished, in a way that made it clear that  _ neck _ was not the word she intended at all.

“Yikes,” said Jace, unfazed.

“Yikes is right, Jace Wayland.” In a flourish of purple, Dorothea stomped back into her apartment.

“Wayland?” asked Ren.

“My name,” said Jace, uncharacteristically shaken. “I can’t say I like that she knows it.”

“I think I prefer Goldilocks,” said Kal with a teasing smile. Jace only shook his head, responding with a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

The thick, sickeningly sweet smell of incense spilled out from Dorothea’s apartment, mingling with the stench of the Forsaken’s blood. It wasn’t the most pleasant of aromas, that was certain.

“Do you really think we should talk to her?” Ren asked, looking toward Dorothea’s door warily. “I dunno about you guys, but she seems… _ off  _ today. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Ren, she could know something about Jocelyn,” insisted Kal, almost pleading. “I have to try.”

Ren glanced at Jace momentarily, as if thinking he might talk Kal out of it. Almost immediately she regretted it, as he flashed her a charming grin. “Don’t worry, girlie, I’ll save you from the scary old lady,” he said, patting her head.

She snapped at him with her teeth and he yanked his hand back. “Touch me again, Goldilocks, and you lose that hand,” she growled.

Jace squinted at Kal. “You know, it’s much less irritating when you call me that.”

“I must not be saying it correctly.” Not quite sure what else to do with it, Kal stuck  _ Halaliel  _ back through his belt loop. “Come on, guys. It’s  _ Dorothea _ . She’s not exactly the scariest neighbor we’ve ever had. Don’t you remember the puppet guy who lived across the hall for three years?”

Ren shuddered. “ _ Gods _ , he was creepy. I’m so glad he moved out the summer after we met.”

“Exactly,” said Kal. “Dorothea is just an old lady who scams mortals by saying she’s psychic. What do we have to lose?”

Jace shook his head. “Once you’ve spent a little more time in our world,” he said grimly, “you won’t ask that again.”

 

###  ~

 

Madame Dorothea’s apartment made Kal’s eyes water, and it wasn’t just the overpowering reek of incense. Seriously, you could a choke a horse with that much incense! A weird horse that ate incense, sure, but a horse nonetheless.

Beaded curtains hung across doorways, and astrological posters were plastered on the walls. One showed a faded Zodiac wheel, another a map of lines on the palm and how they could be used to read someone’s fortune, another was covered in what was presumably a Chinese script that made his head swim even more than usual. Narrow shelves lined the wall to the left of the door, stacked with books upon books of various different subjects.

Ren squinted at the palmistry poster, quite unamused. Jace lifted the cover of one of the books sitting readily on the shelves, peering in at the contents. Kal was just trying to not knock over anything with the blade hanging at his hip.

Something disturbed one of the bead curtains, causing it to rattle; Madame Dorothea stuck her head through it. “Interested in chiromancy?” she asked, and Ren made a noise like a derisive snort hidden behind a cough. Dorothea’s eyes narrowed. “Or just nosy?”

“Neither,” said Ren at the same time Kal said, “Nosy.” They shared a look.

“Can you really tell fortunes with this stuff?” Kal asked, thoroughly unimpressed. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his father was the god of prophecy, but all of this pseudo-psychic mumbo jumbo annoyed him.

“My mother had a great talent. She could see a man’s future in his hand or the leaves at the bottom of his teacup. She taught me many of her tricks.” Dorothea’s gaze flashed over to where Jace was standing. “Speaking of tea, would you like some?”

“Hm?” Jace looked up. He had a mildly surprised expression on his face, as if he hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation, but Kal knew better than that.

“Tea,” said Madame Dorothea. “I find it both settles the stomach and concentrates the mind. Wonderful drink, tea.”

“I would,” said Kal politely. “Ren?”

Ren shrugged. “Eh, sure. If that’s not a bother.”

Dorothea smiled at her before looking back to Jace expectantly. After a moment, he succumbed. “Alright. As long as it isn’t Earl Grey,” he added, lip curling back in disgust. “I can’t stand bergamot.”

The elderly lady let out a cackle of a laugh and vanished through the bead curtain. It was left swaying as though in a breeze, beads clacking lightly together. 

“ _ Chiromancy _ ,” Ren muttered to herself, shaking her head.

Kal stared at Jace. 

“What?” asked the Shadowhunter.

“I can’t believe you hate Earl Grey,” said Kal. “Or, frankly, that you know what bergamot is, let alone that it’s  _ in  _ Earl Grey.”

Jace’s lips quirked up. “At the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal use for plants. It’s required.”

“Hm, I suppose that makes sense.” Kal rolled his shoulders, hoping to alleviate some of the tension in them. It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. His nerves were still jittery from the fight―even if he hadn’t been actively involved in it, not really, those survival instincts engrained in all demigods had decided to rear their annoying little head. His hands were still shaking, and it took clenching them into fists to get them to stop.

Ren seemed tense, too. She was scowling at a book on tarot. “This stuff is bullshit,” she muttered, closing it in a way that made it clear she was trying not to slam it shut. “Rachel would have a conniption.” 

Kal snorted. “Rachel’s too chill for that, come on, now.”

“Rachel?” asked Jace.

“A friend of ours,” Kal told him. “She’s technically mortal―mundane to you―but she serves as our Oracle at camp. She mostly lives in a cave and paints, but she occasionally comes out to spew some prophecy about the end of the world and the demigods who’re gonna stop it.”

Jace raised a brow. “Does that happen often?”

“Not really.” This time, Ren spoke up. “There have only been two Great Prophecies in our lifetime so far―the one that headed off the Titan War three years ago, and the Prophecy of Seven that ended with the war against Gaea.”

“Long story,” Kal added, seeing the look on Jace’s face. “Like, ten books long.”

Ren snickered.

“Why are you two so skeptical of all of this…nonsense?” Jace seemed to be refraining from using a stronger word. He gestured to the overabundance of evidence that this was  _ totally a real fortune teller’s shop _ around them. “Isn’t Apollo the god of prophecy and fortune telling, or something?”

“That’s completely different,” Ren said tersely, before Kal could say anything. “Real prophecies are usually given in visions or dreams, and only those with the power can see them, for the most part. Most demigods get wacky quest-related dreams, but that’s another enchilada.” She flapped her hand as if that train of thought was a pesky fly. “Tea leaves and tarot cards are iffy at  _ best _ , completely unreliable at worst, and that’s even with someone gifted using them! The average joe would only get a bunch of nothing if he tried this stuff.” She huffed, blowing a cotton-candy curl out of her face.

At that moment, the bead curtain rustled again and Madame Dorothea reappeared. “Tea’s on the table,” she said. “No need for you three to keep standing there like mules. Come into the parlor.”

Something about the way she said that made the hair on the back of Kal’s neck stand on end.  _ Come into the parlor, said the spider to the fly _ , rose in his mind, but he shoved it away.

“ _ Mules _ ?” Jace sounded somewhat offended.

“Parlor?” said Ren.

“Of course,” replied Dorothea, as if it should be obvious. “Where else would I entertain?”

“I’ll just leave my hat with the footman,” muttered Jace as she disappeared back through the beads. Almost immediately she was back, scowling at him as he did his best to look innocent.

“If you were half as funny as you think you are, boy, you’d be twice as funny as you are,” she told him. Letting out a loud harrumph, she left again.

Jace frowned. “I’m not quite sure what she meant by that.”

“Really? It made perfect sense to me.” Ren snorted and pushed through the beads after Dorothea, swatting away one that nearly got caught in her hair.

“I get the distinct feeling she’s less than fond of me,” Jace said after a moment, as if this were a revelation just now striking him. He turned to Kal, only to find him staring off into space, fingers absently tracing the engravings on  _ Halaliel _ ’s hilt. “Kal?”

“Hm?” Kal blinked himself back into the present at the sound of his name. “What?”

Jace’s brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”

For just a moment, Kal debated telling Jace about his bad feeling, but he decided against it. He was probably being silly anyway―his nerves were still rattled from the Forsaken attack. “...I’m fine.”

“Is this about the Forsaken?” Jace asked. “About the mark I―?”

“No,” said Kal quickly, because it wasn’t. “I told you earlier. You did it to save my life. I hit you for it, I’m over it. Can we drop it?” Kal pointedly didn’t meet Jace’s gaze as he turned and followed Ren into the parlour, plastic beads slipping over his skin like water.

Compared to the entryway of the apartment, which was at least moderately lit, the parlour was quite dim and it took Kal’s eyes a few moments to adjust. Thick, dark curtains had been drawn across the windows, haloed by the thinnest lines of light. Three of them were packed closer together than the others, at first seeming like one huge window in the middle of the wall.

The wooden floor was layered with old, musty Persian rugs that seemed to be composed of more dust than woven thread. There were more shelves in here with more books, but there were some other oddities filling them as well. Bottles of mysterious and ominous-looking substances sat in rows upon surfaces. Stuffed birds and bats hung from the ceiling with shiny buttons where their eyes should have been, reminding Kal eerily of the the Otherworld from  _ Coraline.  _ He eyed a bleached crow skull on a table with pity, remembering Hugo.

A cluster of horrendously coloured overstuffed armchairs sat around a low table. One end of the table housed a crystal ball in a gaudy golden stand, and at the other sat what looked to be a small journal bound with ribbon; in the middle, a silver tea set had been placed, including a small plate of neatly stacked sandwiches and three cute little teacups on matching saucers curling steam into the air.

Ren was standing by one of the chairs, munching on a sandwich. She was squinting at one of the stuffed bats, prodding its furry little cheek with a finger as if expecting it to come alive and lunge at her. Knowing their track record, that wouldn’t have been all that surprising.

Kal sank into one of the armchairs. He hoped that it looked like he’d sat down gracefully and less like his knees had given out from under him. He felt like he hadn’t sat down in about a million years.

“This looks great, ma’am,” Kal told Dorothea as she took a seat herself.

Her eyes glinted. “Have some tea,” she said, picking up the teapot delicately. “Milk? Sugar?”

Kal glanced at Jace, who’d taken the seat beside him and snatched up the entire plate of sandwiches. The Shadowhunter peered at them closely, presumably trying to discern their contents. “Yes, please,” Kal said gratefully.

“Hey, don’t hog those,” said Ren somewhat snappishly, grabbing the plate from Jace’s hands and replacing it on the table. He watched her amusedly as she sat down, before reaching over and picking up the plate again. She scowled at him.

Jace took a sandwich in his long fingers and took an apprehensive bite. His nose scrunched up. “Cucumber,” he said, sounding somewhat disappointed.

“I always think cucumber sandwiches are just the thing for tea,” said Dorothea. “Don’t you agree?”

She didn’t seem to be speaking to any one of them in particular, but Jace responded anyway. “Not a fan, personally.” He returned the plate to the table and offered the rest of his sandwich to Kal, who took it with a shrug.

“Cucumber and bergamot,” said Kal, biting into the sandwich. His stomach rumbled, delighted by the first food it had in three days. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d eaten. Was it the night after he’d gotten home from Pandemonium? Or had he had breakfast the following morning? He couldn’t recall, which probably should have worried him more than it did. “What else do you hate? Cinnamon? Puppies? Virgin sacrifices?”

Jace snorted into his teacup, looking up at Dorothea over the painted rim. (He hadn’t even waited for the tea to cool, the  _ heathen _ .) “Liars,” he said.

The older lady sighed through her nose. “You can call me a liar all you wish, Jace Wayland,” she said calmly, setting the teapot down. “It’s true. I’m not a witch, but my mother was.”

Jace coughed, choking on his tea. “That’s impossible.”

“Impossible?” asked Ren, raising a brow.

He let out a breath through his nose, putting down his cup. “All warlocks are crossbreeds ―half-human, half-demon. They can’t have children. They’re sterile.”

“Like mules,” said Ren with a wicked grin.

“Hilarious,” Jace said in a droll tone.

Kal took a careful sip of his tea. It was still pretty bitter, even with the sugar, and kind of smoky, but it wasn’t terrible. “Does the demon part make them sterile, or is it something else?” he asked thoughtfully.

“Hell if I know,” replied Jace. “All Downworlders are in some part demonic. Some of them can reproduce, others can’t. However, only warlocks are the children of demon parents. It’s why their powers are so strong.”

“Downworlders?” Ren asked.

“Collective term for vampires, werewolves, the fair folk,” Kal explained, then turned back to Jace. “They’re demonic?”

“Vampirism and lycanthropy are diseases brought by demons from their home dimensions. Most demon diseases are deadly to humans, but in these cases they mutated, turning those infected into something else without killing them. And faeries―”

“Faeries are fallen angels,” said Dorothea, “cast down out of heaven for their pride.”

Kal vaguely remembered that as being the story of Lucifer, and had to suppress a giggle as the image of Supernatural’s Lucifer in a glittery tutu and fairy wings rose in his mind. He was pretty sure that this wasn’t the kind of fairy they meant though―they were probably talking about  _ faeries _ , the cheeky and somewhat cruel mystical beings from Celtic lore. The Little People, the Fair Folk, the Fae, the Sidhe.

“That’s one legend,” said Jace, in a way that made it clear he wasn’t quite fond of it. “It’s also said that they’re the offspring of demons and angels, which always seemed more likely to me. Faeries are as beautiful as angels are supposed to be, but they have a lot of mischief and cruelty in them.”

“Demons and angels doing the horizontal tango,” said Ren under her breath. “What has this world come to?”

“Enough about angels,” said Dorothea, waving her hand impatiently. “It’s true that warlocks don’t have children. My mother adopted me so that there’d be someone to tend this place after she was gone. I don’t have to master magic myself, I only have to watch and guard.”

_ That seems like a shitty reason to adopt a kid,  _ Kal thought, but didn’t say. “Guard what?” he asked instead.

“What indeed?” the older woman replied mysteriously, winking at him. She leaned across the table, picking up what Kal had initially thought to be a small journal but now realized was a stack of cards―tarot cards. Dorothea untied the ribbon and set the cards down before him, spreading them out into a fanning layer. “Slide your hand over these until you touch one that feels hot or cold, or seems to cling to your fingers. Then draw that one and show it to me.”

Feeling a little foolish, Kal sat forward and did what she said. The cards were cool to the touch, slick and shiny like the scales of a snake. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw that both Ren and Jace were at attention, intrigued despite their previous comments about such practices.

Kal wasn’t expecting much at all, and was all too ready to cast this off as more silly mumbo jumbo. But then his hand passed over a card, and it  _ stuck. _ He tensed. Glancing warily at the others, he slowly picked it up and turned it over.

It was surprisingly heavy, hand painted with thick acrylic. In strong, deliberate, achingly familiar strokes, the image of a hand holding out a cup had been carefully created. The cup, or goblet possibly (Kal wasn’t entirely sure if there was a difference between the two) was rendered in gold, shining in the thin light leaking from behind the curtains. Suns decorated the sides of the cup, as well as other decorative, swirling motifs.

Beside him, Jace sucked in a breath.

“The Ace of Cups,” said Dorothea bemusedly. She tapped her fingers against her mouth, studying Kal with a newfound interest. “The love card.”

“Is that…good?” Ren asked, as Kal was too busy staring at the card to do it.

“Not necessarily. The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love.” Madame Dorothea hadn’t taken her eyes from Kal’s face. “But it is a powerful card. What does it mean to you?”

“Jocelyn painted this,” Kal said without hesitation. His fingers trailed delicately along the edge of the cup, feeling the tiny ridges in the brushstrokes that the sealant hadn’t completely filled. He didn’t think he remembered seeing her paint it, but the image of the cup seemed familiar. A half-forgotten dream. 

He tore his eyes away from it and met the older lady’s gaze. “Didn’t she?”

Dorothea inclined her head. “She painted the whole pack. A gift for me.”

“Was Jocelyn a Shadowhunter?” Kal asked bluntly, and the room went quiet. 

Ren’s eyes had gone wide (had he forgotten to mention that was a possibility?). Even Jace seemed a bit surprised. Somewhere in the apartment, something hummed faintly. 

“Well?” Kal said when the silence went on for too long.

The older lady leased a long breath. “Yes, she was,” she said. “Or rather, she had been, many years before she came to this place―with your mother.”

The breath caught in Kal’s throat. “You mean my mom was―?”

“It’s precisely why they came to live here,” said Dorothea. “This is a sanctuary, a safe place from the too-harsh judgement of the Clave.” She cast a sharp look toward Jace, who clenched his teeth in return.

“Of course,” he said, standing abruptly. “Your mother was a warlock. She created this place―probably warded the everloving hell out of it―as a hiding place for Downworlders on the run. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You hide criminals here.”

“You  _ would  _ call them that,” said Dorothea in disgust, shaking her head. “You’re familiar with the motto of the Covenant, I presume?”

“ _ Sed lex dura lex, _ ” said Jace automatically. Latin didn’t usually come easily to Greek half-bloods like Kal, but he somehow knew what it meant before before Jace said it. “‘The Law is hard, but it is the Law.’”

“Sometimes the Law is too hard. I know the Clave would have taken me from my mother if they could. Marina Heiler’s only crime was falling for a mundane, and for that, she could have been forced to Descend. Would you really expect me to sit by and allow that to happen to others?”

Kal didn’t know why, but at the mention of  _ Descending _ , the mark on his wrist seemed to burn. 

At the same time, Jace’s anger seemed to diminish slightly. He glanced at Kal, then set his jaw. “A philanthropist, lovely.” His lip curled. “And I suppose that Downworlders you shield  _ don’t _ pay you handsomely for the privilege of your sanctuary?”

Dorothea flashed a grin, wide enough to show off gold-capped molars. “Well, not all of can get by on our looks, Jace Wayland.”

Jace bristled, his hand shooting to his side as if he was going for a weapon. Kal grabbed his wrist instinctively, trying to keep this from escalating into a full-blown confrontation. “Jace,” he said quietly, and Jace looked at him, tension leaking from his shoulders. “Don’t. Please.” 

For a moment, it almost seemed like Jace was going to relent and sit back down. Then his gaze snagged on something behind Kal. His eyes narrowed, then went wide. Pulling his arm from Kal’s hold, Jace strode around the couch.

Kal twisted around to watch him. Jace had stopped before the clustered windows and gripped the thick velvet curtains of the one in the middle, before throwing them back. Not another window, as Kal had initially thought, but a door lay behind, plain and innocuous save for the bizarre, eye-shaped handle and the fact that it couldn’t possibly have gone anywhere but a brick wall.

Jace made a noise of smug affirmation, as if this was something he regularly came across and had been expecting. “A Portal. Of course.”

“It’s a door,” said Ren quizzically, speaking for the first time in a good, long while.

“A five-dimensional door,” said Dorothea with a resigned breath. “Dimensions aren’t all straight lines, child,” she told Ren in response to her blank look. “There are dips and folds and nooks and crannies all tucked away. It’s a bit difficult to understand if you’ve never studied dimensional theory, but, in essence, that door can take you anywhere in this dimension that you want to go. It’s―”

“It’s an escape hatch,” finished Jace, and Kal suddenly understood.

“That’s why Jocelyn wanted to live here, why Mom―” Kal didn’t remember getting to his feet, but he was standing now, walking toward the door. “If something happened, they could leave through this. But Jocelyn didn’t go through it that night. Because of me.” 

“ _ Kal _ ,” said Ren, and it sounded as though she’d meant to say  _ it’s not your fault. _

But she was wrong. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. Jocelyn had stayed behind because of him, even knowing that he’d be safe at camp. She’d stayed behind for him and now she was gone, captured or worse and―and it was because of him.

_ No, don’t think that _ , implored some small part of his mind, but it was quickly overpowered by guilt. His mother, Eli, and now possible Jocelyn… They were gone because of him.

He found himself reaching for the door. Where would Jocelyn have gone, had she used it? What was the one place she thought would be the safest for them? Safer than home, safer than camp?

“Kal, don’t!” shouted Jace, but it was too late―Kal’s fingers closed around the knob. It spun in his grip, burning his skin, and then the door was opening, pulling him with it. A hand found his wrist.

Then they were falling forward into nothingness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gods I am SOOOO SORRY FOR THE WAIT!! I didn't even realize how long it had been since the last update until I got a new comment on Quotev and was reminded that I hadn't worked on a new chapter in a while. I won't make excuses, just know that I'm terribly sorry.
> 
> Okie doke, onto the notes!
> 
> -So apparently "chiromancy" is the fancy-smancy term for palm reading. Not sure if the etymology actually links it to Chiron or if that's just an interesting coincidence.
> 
> -Fun fact about me: Jace saying that he didn't like Earl Grey tea because of bergamot (coupled with the fact that Ciel Phantomhive from Black Butler did like it) is what tempted me to try Early Grey in the first place. I actually quite like it.
> 
> -I just realized that in the PJO books, they used "halfblood" more often than "demigod" and I feel a bit stupid for making that mistake but...oh well. Whoops.
> 
> -Coraline is a freaky children's movie based off of an equally freaky children's book. Lonng story short, the main character Coraline finds herself in a pocket dimension called the Otherworld where every living creature has buttons instead of eyes.
> 
> -Did you know that Sidhe is actually pronounced "shee"?? Yep. I fucking hate Gaelic. (No offense, but godDAMN)
> 
>  
> 
> Sooooo, in the process of writing this chapter, I had a thought regarding the storyline that would be a rather interesting revision of the original story or of this one. The only thing is that it would take a maaaaaaaajor rewrite of the first couple of chapters (which need to be rewritten anyway) and might take me a while now that school's going and ???? I think it would be much more interesting and unique for a rewrite than just rehashing the same bits but with a new character and whatnot. I could still work on this version, and create an entirely new story for the rewrite (but with Kal and Ren and them still)??? If you guys would be interested?? If not I'd probably still write it but I wouldn't spend as much time on it.
> 
> I promise that it won't take me five months to put out the next chapter, haha. (I'm so sorry)
> 
> ~A very tired and apologetic writer


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